Des Aigoo Ls Bee Final

Investment, Overhang, and Tax Policy
THE PAST DECADE HAS seen an unusual pattern of investment. The boom
of the 1990s generated unusually high investment rates, particularly in
equipment, and the bust of the 2000s witnessed an unusually large decline
in investment. A drop in equipment investment normally accounts for
about 10 to 20 percent of the decline in GDP during a recession; in the
2001 recession, however, it accounted for 120 percent.
1
In the public mind, the recent boom and bust in investment are directly
linked due to capital overhang. Although the term is not very precisely
dened, this view generally holds that excess investment in the 1990s,
fueled by an asset price bubble, left corporations with excess capital
stocks, and therefore no demand for investment, during the 2000s. The
popular view also holds that these conditions will continue until normal
economic growth eliminates the overhang and, consequently, that there is
little policymakers can do to remedy the situation, by subsidizing invest-
ment with tax policy, for example. Variants on this view have been
espoused by private sector analysts and economists,
2
and the notion of a
285
MI HI R A. DES AI
Harvard University
AUS TAN D. GOOL S BEE
University of Chicago
We thank Mark Veblen and James Zeitler for their invaluable research assistance, as
well as Alan Auerbach, Kevin Hassett, John Leahy, Joel Slemrod, and participants at the
Brookings Panel conference for their comments. Dale Jorgenson was kind enough to pro-
vide estimates of the tax term by asset. Mihir Desai thanks the Division of Research at Har-
vard Business School for nancial support. Austan Goolsbee thanks the American Bar
Foundation and the National Science Foundation for nancial support.
1. McCarthy (2003) documents the decline in equipment investment as a share of GDP
for all business cycles since 1953 and shows the 2001 recession to be an outlier.
2. See, for example, Berner (2001); Graeme Leach, The Worries of the World,
GCIEye no. 1, 2002, accessed August 2004 (www.gcieurope.com/eye/GCIEye_Issue01.
pdf), and Stephen Roach, The Costs of Bursting Bubbles, New York Times, September 22,
2002, section 4, p. 13.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 285
capital overhang has certainly been on the minds of leading Federal
Reserve ofcials and researchers.
3
Whether or not a capital overhang is the true explanation of the
investment bust, it is clear that the drop in investment has motivated
policymakers to try to stimulate investment through ambitious fiscal
policy changes.
4
Under President George W. Bush, depreciation allow-
ances for equipment investment have been increased twice, in 2002 and
2003, and in 2003 the tax rate on dividend income was cut sharply and
that on capital gains income more modestly. These measures were mainly
intended to increase after-tax returns and stimulate investment. The typi-
cal analysis of the investment collapse and policy response is summarized
by the Republican chairman of the Joint Economic Committee:
Excessive and bad business investments made during the stock market bubble
have taken years to liquidate. In nine of the 10 quarters beginning with the
fourth quarter of 2000, real business investment has declined. Fortunately,
recent tax legislation signed into law in 2003 should promote business invest-
ment by increasing the after-tax returns from investing in capital assets and
alleviating nancing constraints among small and medium-size rms.
5
Yet, after several years of tax cuts, investment has still not risen impres-
sively compared with previous recoveries. This contrast has reignited
claims that tax policy is ineffective at stimulating investment, although
some make the more specic charge that tax policy is impotent when it
follows a period of excessive investment.
This paper examines the evidence on the two related issues of capital
overhang and taxes using data at the industry, the asset, and especially
the rm level. Specically, we address two questions: rst, did over-
investment in the 1990s cause the low investment of the 2000s, and, second,
did investment in the 2000s become less sensitive to prices, and does this
explain why tax policies, specically the equipment expensing and the
dividend tax cuts of 2002 and 2003, seem to have been ineffective in
restoring investment to normal levels?
286 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2:2004
3. See, for example, Greenspan (2002), Ferguson (2001), Bernanke (2003), French,
Klier, and Oppedahl (2002), Pelgrin, Schich, and de Serres (2002), Kliesen (2003), Doms
(2004), and McCarthy (2004).
4. Unlike the behavior of investment, the behavior of tax policy in the 2000s is com-
pletely consistent with earlier time periods. Cummins, Hassett, and Hubbard (1994) have
documented that a primary determinant of investment tax subsidies is a drop in investment.
5. Saxton (2003).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 286
We begin by examining the degree to which growth in investment
during the boom was correlated with a decline in investment during the
bust across different assets and industries. There are, of course, many
possible definitions of overhang or excess investment. We will not try to
show that there was no overoptimism in product or capital markets.
Clearly equity prices rose substantially and then fell, as did investment
rates. Instead we investigate whether investment grew the most in those
assets and industries in which it subsequently declined the most. We
want to know if any aftereffects of the investment boom of the 1990s
persisted into the 2000swhether firms behaved differently because too
much capital remained from the investment decisions of the 1990s.
The evidence across assets, industries, and firms suggests that, con-
trary to the popular view, there is little correlation between the invest-
ment boom of the 1990s and the investment bust of the 2000s. We also
present some more specific evidence, using firm-level data, that invest-
ment behavior has remained just as responsive to the fundamentals (as
measured by Tobins q) regardless of how much a firms investment
grew or how much its market value rose in the 1990s. Essentially, we
find that the explanatory power of the standard empirical model of
investment has not deteriorated in the 2000s, despite the common per-
ception that it has.
We then use that standard model to consider the impact of tax cuts. To
estimate the impact of the dividend tax reduction, we revisit an enduring
debate in public nance between the new view of dividend taxation,
which says that dividend tax cuts do not reduce the cost of capital for mar-
ginal investments, and the traditional view, which says that such cuts do
reduce the marginal cost of capital and thus stimulate investment. The
evidence at the rm level strongly supports the new view and suggests
that the dividend tax reductions enacted in 2003 had little or no effect on
investment.
Finally, to estimate the impact of the changes in depreciation allow-
ances, we estimate a tax-adjusted q model similar to that of Lawrence
Summers,
6
but with greater emphasis on the importance of error in the
measurement of q, as emphasized by Jason Cummins, Kevin Hassett, and
Mihir A. Desai and Austan D. Goolsbee 287
6. Summers (1981).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 287
7. Cummins, Hassett, and Hubbard (1994).
8. Tevlin and Whelan (2003) argue that much of the increase in gross investment can
be explained empirically by falling prices of computers and their higher depreciation rates.
Glenn Hubbard.
7
The method introduced for handling these measurement
error issues yields results that suggest that both tax policy and q are likely
to have much larger effects on investment than found in the traditional lit-
erature, where coefcients are very small and imply implausibly large
costs of adjustment. Even with the more reasonable adjustment costs, how-
ever, we show that the depreciation allowance changes of 2002 and 2003
changed the tax term by a relatively small amount: the estimated overall
impact in these two years was an increase in investment of only 1 to 2 per-
cent, far too small to offset the double-digit declines of the early 2000s.
Capital Overhang and Investment
Real investment was considerably higher than normal during the late
1990s. When recession years are excluded, investment from 1947:1 to
1995:2 averaged about 12 percent of GDP; the highest quarterly level was
15 percent in 1984:3. From 1996:1 to 2000:4, in contrast, this ratio aver-
aged more than 16 percent, and it reached 18 percent at its peak. The dis-
tinctiveness of these investment rates holds even relative to the business
cycle. Figure 1 shows that investment in the quarters leading up to the
2001 peak was higher than it had been during comparable periods in pre-
vious cycles. The popular view holds that this extra investment resulted
from the excesses of the 1990s bubble.
8
With this view in mind, gure 2 provides a counterpart to gure 1,
showing the path of investment in the period after the trough quarter for
the recovery that began in late 2001 and for the average of previous
recoveries. The increase in investment in the current recovery, at least
through the beginning of 2004, is notably smaller than in the average
recovery. Taken together, these trends make it plausible to many observers
that investment after the most recent trough was lower than in previous
cycles precisely because investment in previous years had been higher.
Of course, these aggregate patterns do not establish any underlying
connection between the rise and the fall. To test for a causal relationship,
we believe, it is critical to disaggregate the investment data. Most aca-
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 288
demic work looking at the capital overhang has not done so, or has done so
at a very broad level, emphasizing that the reversal in investment has been
concentrated in information technology investment.
9
It is clear that the
exuberance of the 1990s was not shared equally in all sectors. Industries
such as telecommunications experienced huge increases in the 1990s in a
way that railroads or mining, say, did not. We believe that any overhang,
in the sense of excess capital remaining at the end of the boom, is inher-
ently an industry- or rm-level phenomenon, which requires that we look
at data at that level.
An additional reason to look at the industry- and rm-level data is that
investment theory typically begins with the premise that there is a per-
fectly functioning secondary market for capital goods and a at supply
curve for capital. In such a world, rms with an overhang of unused cap-
ital equipment can simply sell it without incurring any loss. For the
9. Two papers by McCarthy (2001, 2004) are exceptions.
0.8
0.9
1.0
12 8 4
Quarters before peak
Source: Authors calculations using National Income and Product Accounts data.
a. Investment is measured as a fraction of GDP.
Average of previous postwar cycles
19962000
Index = 1.0 at peak
Figure 1. Real Investment Relative to Business Cycle Peak, Postwar Average and
19962000
a
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 289
popular view to make sense, then, either investment must be in some way
irreversible (which leads to a rather different model),
10
or there must be
some other type of adjustment cost associated with disinvestment.
11
Matthew Shapiro and Valerie Ramey have documented that, in some
industries, a sizable wedge can develop between the purchase price of
capital goods and the sale price.
12
These types of irreversibilities are
likely to be rm or asset specic rather than applying to all types of invest-
ment in all sectors homogeneously. Fortunately, data on investment are
available at the industry, asset type, and rm level, and, as we will show,
the evidence at all three levels of disaggregation is generally the same.
10. As in, for example, Abel and Eberly (2002).
11. The adjustment costs could be at the rm level, or they might be external in the
sense that the supply of capital goods in a particular industry is upward sloping as in Gools-
bee (1998, 2001).
12. Ramey and Shapiro (2001). Evidence presented by Goolsbee and Gross (2000) is
also consistent with that view.
1.0
1.1
1.2
1.3
4 8 12
Quarters past trough
Source: Authors calculations using National Income and Product Accounts data.
a. Investment is measured as a fraction of GDP.
200104
Averages of previous postwar cycles
Index = 1.0 at trough
Figure 2. Real Investment Relative to Business Cycle Trough, Postwar Average and
200104
a
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 290
13. Before 1997, Standard Industrial Classication (SIC) codes were employed.
14. See, for example, Auerbach and Hassett (1992), who discuss the problems with
estimating structures investment.
Evidence at the Industry Level
We begin with the evidence on changes in investment at the industry
level. Rather than rely on the more aggregated xed asset data available
from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), we turn to the Annual
Capital Expenditure Survey (ACES) of the U.S. Census Bureau, which pro-
vides a ner industry disaggregation than is available elsewhere. The sur-
vey samples approximately 46,000 companies in more than 100 industries,
categorized according to the 1997 North American Industry Classication
System (NAICS). We narrow this categorization down to eighty-one
nonoverlapping industries at approximately the three-digit NAICS level.
13
The ACES provides measures of gross investment only and does not
estimate industries capital stock. Consequently, we cannot scale invest-
ment by lagged capital as is done in traditional empirical work on invest-
ment. Instead we simply investigate the change in total investment both for
equipment alone and for equipment and structures combined. Empirical
models of investment have struggled to explain the behavior of investment
in structures, and it is not known whether this problem is due to mismea-
surement in the tax term, unobservable factors in structures markets (such
as liquidity and nancing issues relating to the supply side of the market),
or some other factor.
14
Since we cannot readily isolate equipment invest-
ment from structures investment in the rm-level data employed below,
we have to assume that equipment investment and overall investment
behave in the same way. Given that, by the 2000s, equipment accounted
for something like 80 percent of nonresidential investment, this may not
be too heroic an assumption, but the results in these areas will allow us to
check the results in a circumstance where we have both sets of data.
Our goal with these data is to look for general evidence supporting the
view that a capital overhang from the 1990s is a key factor determining
investment in the 2000s. If overhang is quantitatively important, one
might expect to nd that those industries in which investment has fallen in
the 2000s are the same as those in which investment grew substantially in
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 291
the 1990s. To test this relationship formally, we performed a cross-
sectional regression of the change in log investment by industry from
2000 to 2002 (the period widely viewed as the collapse) on the change
in log investment from 1994 to 1999 in the same industry, estimating the
following equation:
(1) ln(I
i, 2002
) ln(I
i, 2000
) + [ln(I
i, 1999
) ln(I
i, 1994
)] +
i
.
This test would show no evidence of reversion, of course, if all indus-
tries boomed and then busted together equally, since any such effect
would simply appear in the constant term. Given that the investment
growth of the 1990s was not likely to have been identical across indus-
tries, this equation provides a useful estimation strategy.
Table 1 presents, in the top panel, the results of estimating equation 1
by ordinary least squares (OLS) and, in the bottom panel, results for the
same specications employing median regressions, to ensure that the
Table 1. Regressions of Changes in Investment during 200002 on Changes in
Investment during the 1990s, Equipment Only, Using Data by Industry
a
Manufacturing Manufacturing
All industries only All industries only
Sample period 1-1 1-2 1-3 1-4
Ordinary least squares regressions
199499 0.084 0.5315
(0.0693) (0.1894)
199799 0.0582 0.4204
(0.0853) (0.2047)
199497 0.1435 0.7878
(0.1331) (0.2704)
No. of observations 81 23 81 23
Adjusted R
2
.018 .273 .022 .330
Median regressions
199499 0.0205 0.5836
(0.0994) (0.2210)
199799 0.0239 0.5712
(0.1392) (0.2753)
199497 0.1164 0.8117
(0.2206) (0.4492)
Source: Authors regressions using data from the Annual Capital Expenditure Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau.
a. The dependent variable in all regressions is the change in log capital expenditure on equipment from 2000 to 2002; the inde-
pendent variable is the same change in log values in the same industry for the indicated sample period. Numbers in parentheses
are standard errors.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 292
results in the top panel do not purely reect the role of large outliers. Col-
umn 1-1 reports the results from the basic overhang specication. The
OLS and median regressions produce coefcients that are negative but
very small and not signicantly different from zero. To give a sense of the
magnitude of this effect, a 1-standard-deviation change in the investment
rate from 1994 to 1999 (0.53, or from the median of 0.38 to about the 85th
percentile) is associated with only a 2.9 percent lower level of investment
(less than one-twelfth of a standard deviation) from 2000 to 2002. This is
modest evidence of an overhang, at best.
Given the serious decline of manufacturing in the most recent reces-
sion, and given that old-line manufacturing was not typically involved in
the Internet boom, we further investigate the manufacturing sector sepa-
rately. In column 1-2, which restricts the sample to the twenty-three
manufacturing industries, the evidence for an overhang seems more pro-
nounced. In both the OLS and the median regressions, there is a large and
signicant negative coefcient on the change in investment from 1994 to
1999. In the median regression, a 1-standard-deviation increase in the
investment rate among manufacturing industries (a log value of 0.32) in
199499 corresponds to an almost 22 percent lower investment rate in
200002, which is equal to about two-thirds of the standard deviation of
those changes. If one takes this larger effect as evidence of overhang (as
opposed to a cyclical phenomenon), however, it should be noted that
manufacturing industries accounted for only about 22 percent of total
equipment investment and 18 percent of total investment in 2002, accord-
ing to the ACES.
15
Consequently, on the present evidence, mean reversion
for manufacturing can explain only a limited part of the aggregate col-
lapse of investment.
The common explanation for capital overhang is that an abundance of
funds raised in the capital market during the bubble encouraged the
excess investment, particularly during the 199799 period. Indeed, the
broadly disaggregated, cost of capitaltype analysis done by Jonathan
McCarthy suggests that there was no capital overhang at all until 1998,
even in the high-technology investment goods sector (computers and
communications equipment).
16
In columns 1-3 and 1-4, therefore, we con-
15. This is also consistent with the evidence cited by Bernanke (2003).
16. McCarthy (2003).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 293
sider separately the periods from 1994 to 1997 and from 1997 to 1999 in
order to isolate the effects of the bubble period and to take account of
underlying growth trends in different industries that might mask invest-
ment reversion. Again there is little evidence of reversion across all
industries, and there are larger negative coefcients in manufacturing.
The later period, in which the overhang is alleged to have occurred, has a
smaller coefcient than the earlier period, although the standard errors are
not small enough to reject the hypothesis that they are equal. Rather than
supporting the intuition of a bubble-induced capital overhang, this consid-
eration of the two subperiods suggests some underlying, more secular
mechanism associated with the continuing decline in U.S. manufacturing.
Table 2 considers the behavior of both equipment and structures
investment. The results are qualitatively similar to those in table 1 in that
they show little evidence of reversion, either generally or in manufactur-
ing, featuring the dynamics discussed earlier.
Investment during the 1990s, Equipment and Structures, Using Data by Industry
a
Manufacturing Manufacturing
All industries only All industries only
Sample period 2-1 2-2 2-3 2-4
199499 0.0516 0.5426
(0.0645) (0.169)
199799 0.0677 0.4786
(0.0871) (0.1916)
199497 0.0304 0.6663
(0.1001) (0.2395)
Adjusted R
2
0.008 0.329 0.009 0.247
Median regressions
199499 0.0533 0.6793
(0.1066) (0.2030)
199799 0.0285 0.5450
(0.1182) (0.3532)
199497 0.1186 0.6564
(0.1184) (0.3665)
Source: Authors regressions using data from the Annual Capital Expenditure Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau.
a. The dependent variable in all regressions is the change in log capital expenditure on equipment and structures from 2000 to
2002; the independent variable is the change in log values in the same industry for the indicated sample period. Numbers in
parentheses are standard errors.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 294
Evidence at the Asset Level
Next we consider the general evidence on investment by type of invest-
ment good rather than by industry. We did this by testing our basic regres-
sion model (equation 1) using data by asset category instead of by
industry. Using only the BEA data available for the whole period
19942002, we have twenty-ve different categories of equipment and an
additional nine categories of structures.
17
As in tables 1 and 2, the two
panels of table 3 report both OLS and median regressions. (Weighting by
the initial capital stock in these regressions provides very similar results,
which we do not report here.) Those asset types that had the largest
increases in investment from 1994 to 1999 are not systematically those
that had the largest drop in investment from 2000 to 2002: the regressions
17. The categories of structures employed by the BEA change slightly over the period.
Investment during the 1990s, Using Data by Asset Type
a
Sample period 3-1 3-2
199499 0.0945
(0.0970)
199799 0.0388
(0.1576)
199497 0.2326
(0.1611)
No. of observations
b
34 34
Adjusted R
2
.029 .063
Median regressions
199499 0.1490
(0.1105)
199799 0.0545
(0.1270)
199497 0.2407
(0.1113)
No. of observations
b
34 34
Source: Authors regressions using National Income and Product Accounts data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
a. The dependent variable in all regressions is the change in log capital expenditure from 2000 to 2002; the independent vari-
able is the same change in log values for the same asset type for the indicated sample period. Numbers in parentheses are standard
errors.
b. Sample includes twenty-ve categories of capital equipment and nine categories of structures.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 295
show a small and insignicant negative coefcient. This is equally true in
the OLS and the median regression, and the coefcients have similar
magnitudes. In the top panel, the estimate in column 3-1 indicates that an
asset type whose log investment grew by 1 standard deviation (a log value
of 0.36) more than the median asset from 1994 to 1999 would be expected
to have a drop in log investment from 2000 to 2002 about one-sixth of a
standard deviation larger than that of the median rm.
Column 3-2 repeats this analysis but splits the data into the early and
late periods of the boom, 199497 and 199799, respectively. Here,
although the coefcient estimates are imprecise, they are not consistent
with the typical overhang story. If anything, the coefcients are again
larger in absolute value in the earlier period than in the later period. Indeed,
both of the point estimates in the later period are greater than zero, suggesting
that those assets whose real investment grew most in the 1990s saw even
greater investment growth in the 2000s. The irrational exuberance
hypothesis would say just the opposite. Of course, in both cases the
regressions do not control for anything but merely indicate the absence of
a strong negative correlation. Using the rm-level data, we can further
investigate these phenomena at the rm level, with better controls for
observables related to investment opportunities.
Evidence at the Firm Level
Our rm-level sample includes all companies that appear in the Com-
pustat research file from 1962 to 2003. Figure 3 plots the average
investment rate (dened as capital expenditure divided by the beginning-
of-period net capital stock) for manufacturing rms, for nonmanufactur-
ing rms, and for rms involved in information businesses. Information
businesses are defined as those in NAICS categories 334 (computer
manufacturing) and 51 (information); this grouping is one we return to
later, because the irrational exuberance of the late 1990s is commonly
viewed as having been most extreme there. These data reveal the same
pattern as the aggregate data: investment rates rose dramatically in the
1990s and then fell dramatically in the 2000s. We cannot say how repre-
sentative the universe of publicly traded firms is of the rest of the econ-
omy, but in some ways the sheer magnitude of the firm-level sample
makes it an overwhelmingly important component of aggregate invest-
ment on its own. Our calculations suggest that aggregate capital expendi-
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 296
ture in the rms in the Compustat data constituted 85 to 90 percent of pri-
vate, nonresidential investment in the United States for most of the last
twenty-ve years.
18
Our sample in 2003 does not include all rms, since
some share of rms had yet to have their reports coded by Compustat at
the time of our analysis. Nonetheless, the sample is large (more than 80
percent of the 2002 sample) and provides a perspective not afforded by
the industry-or asset-level data, given their earlier cutoffs.
We begin with the general evidence that parallels the previous results
in examining the changes in investment rates during the bust and the sub-
sequent boom, but with the advantage that, in the rm-level data, we can
compute the change in the investment rate because we have capital stock
data for each rm. Our modied regression equation, then, is
18. One important shortcoming of the Compustat data (and common to virtually all
empirical work that uses these data to study investment) is the inability to isolate domestic
from international expenditure or the degree to which q measures worldwide rather than
domestic investment opportunities.
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000
Nonmanufacturing
Manufacturing
Information businesses
Ratio
a
Source: Authors calculations using Compustat data.
a. Ratio of current capital expenditure to the capital stock in the previous period, calculated as described in appendix A.
Figure 3. Firm-Level Investment Rates by Sector, 19622003
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 297
where I is capital expenditure at the rm level and is scaled by the lagged
capital stock K.
19
As before, the top panel of table 4 presents the OLS results and the bot-
tom panel the median regression results. Column 4-1 reports results for a
specication that emphasizes the relationship between the change in
investment rates over the 199499 boom and that over the 200002 bust.
Given that a rm must have existed in 1994, 1999, 2000, and 2002 to
appear in the sample for this regression, the sample size is somewhat
( ) , 2
2002 2000 1999 1994
I
K
I
K
I
K
I
K
i i i i
_
,

_
,
+

_
,

_
,
1
]
1
+ e
19. Appendix A describes how we compute the capital stock for each rm, following
Salinger and Summers (1984) and Cummins, Hassett, and Hubbard (1994).
Table 4. Regressions of Changes in Investment Rates during 200002 on Changes in
Investment Rates during the 1990s, Using Data by Firm
a
Independent variable 4-1 4-2 4-3
Investment rate change, 199499 0.0325 0.0237
(0.0234) (0.0216)
Investment rate change, 199799 0.0739
(0.0376)
(0.0252)
Change in sales, 200002
b
0.0364
(0.0304)
No. of observations 3,249 3,225 3,172
Adjusted R
2
.002 .005 .004
Median regressions
Investment rate change, 199499 0.0170 0.0120
(0.0051) (0.0051)
(0.0063)
(0.0051)
Change in sales, 200002
b
0.0545
(0.0040)
Source: Authors regressions using data from Compustat.
a. The dependent variable in all regressions is the change in the rms investment rate, as dened in the text, from 2000 to
2002. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors.
b. In percent.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 298
smaller than the full universe of rms. These results again show a very
small and insignicant negative correlation in the changes in investment
rates. The median percentage change in the capital stock from 2000 to
2002 was 0.3 percent. The estimated coefcients are indeed tiny com-
pared with the median rm. The coefcient on the lagged investment
change variable indicates that a rm whose increase in investment rate
during the boom was 1 standard deviation (about 0.65) above that of the
median rm would have seen its investment fall by about 0.02, or only
about one-thirty-fth of a standard deviation, during the bust. The bottom
panel of table 4 repeats this specication but controls for outliers by using
a median regression (particularly important when rm data are used), and
here the coefcient is even smaller but statistically significant. A firm
whose investment grew by 1 standard deviation more than the median dur-
ing the boom would have seen its investment fall during the bust by only
about one-seventieth of a standard deviation more than the median rm.
The regressions reported in column 4-2 of both panels in table 4 split
the 199499 period into two parts as an additional control, to account for
rms whose size is trending upward. Inclusion of this split, however, pro-
duced little change in the general result of a very small negative impact
relative to trend. Finally, the regressions in column 4-3 include the per-
centage change in the rms real sales as an additional control, to further
take into account the fact that rms might be growing or shrinking over
the period in a way that drives the investment results. (Recall the large
coefcients on manufacturing investment in the industry-level data.) In
this regression, sales growth is positively correlated with growth in
investment, but the evidence on reversion is even a bit more modest than
in the rst two columns.
The evidence thus far, then, provides very limited support for the view
that rms, asset types, and industries that had major increases in their
investment in the 1990s experienced major drops in investment in the
2000s. This seems to suggest that overhang was not the dominant factor
inuencing investment in the later period. A more precise test is available,
however, by relating overhang to the sensitivity of investment to funda-
mentals at the rm level.
Evidence on Overhang and the Sensitivity of Investment
The rm-level data allow us to further examine whether rms have
been less responsive to changes in tax-adjusted q in the 2000s if they had
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 299
signicant valuation increases in the 1990s. If, in fact, rms experiencing
large changes in market value exhibit a different response than other rms
to tax-adjusted q in the 2000s, this could help explain why taxes have not
seemed to have a major impact on investment. The next section and
appendix B discuss in more detail our tax-adjusted measure of q and the
model underlying it. There we provide a fuller discussion of the measure-
ment issues and the predictions of that model, but we include this analysis
here in order to fully address the overhang phenomenon. Our basic esti-
mating equation will add an interaction term to the standard equation
relating investment to q.
We investigate the relevance of two different measures of overhang
in the 1990s: one based on equity values and one based on capital expan-
sion. Table 5 reports results of regressions using the lagged change in q
as a measure of the degree to which overhang is operative.
20
We create
the variable
t 7
t 3
q
2000+
it
, which is the change in q observed in the period
three to seven years before the current year and only for the
time period 200003.
21
So, in 2002 for example, this variable would be
the change in the firms q from 1995 to 1999. Before the 2000s this
variable is always zero. One view of the overhang hypothesis is that
investment for firms with large capital overhangs from the 1990s should
be less sensitive to fundamentals or tax rates.
22
This yields the following investment equation:
(3) (I/K)
it

i
+
t
+
1
Q
it
+ Q
it
(
t 7
t 3
q
2000+
it
) +
2
(cash/K)
it
+
it
.
Here
i
and
t
are rm and year dummies, respectively, and Q is tax-
adjusted q, as dened below. Column 5-1 of table 5 presents the results
20. We considered using the lagged change in the price-earnings ratio as the measure
of rms with overhang, but this had the obvious problem that many rms had negative
earnings.
21. Other lags, such as the change in q from ve years ago to two years ago, yield sim-
ilar results.
22. In a previous draft we also examined whether having had a large increase in K or in
q during the 1990s led the level of investment at the rm to be lower, controlling for current
q (as opposed to the increase changing the slope of the investment-q relationship). We
found virtually no evidence that it did.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 300
T
a
b
l
e

5
.
R
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

T
e
s
t
i
n
g

S
e
n
s
i
t
i
v
i
t
y

o
f

t
h
e

F
i
r
m
-
L
e
v
e
l

I
n
v
e
s
t
m
e
n
t
-
Q
R
e
l
a
t
i
o
n
s
h
i
p

t
o

P
a
s
t

C
h
a
n
g
e
s

i
n

q
a
I
n
f
o
r
m
a
t
i
o
n
A
l
l
A
l
l
b
u
s
i
n
e
s
s
e
s
M
a
n
u
f
a
c
t
u
r
i
n
g
A
l
l
i
n
d
u
s
t
r
i
e
s
i
n
d
u
s
t
r
i
e
s
o
n
l
y
o
n
l
y
i
n
d
u
s
t
r
i
e
s
I
n
d
e
p
e
n
d
e
n
t

v
a
r
i
a
b
l
e
5
-
1
5
-
2
5
-
3
5
-
4
5
-
5
Q
0
.
0
1
2
4
0
.
0
2
2
1
0
.
0
1
4
3
0
.
0
1
3
7
0
.
0
1
2
3
(
0
.
0
0
1
4
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
3
)
(
0
.
0
0
3
2
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
8
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
4
)
Q
q
(
t
3

t
o

t
7
)
,
0
.
0
0
0
6
0
.
0
0
0
2
0
.
0
0
0
5
0
.
0
0
1
0
0
.
0
0
0
6
2
0
0
0

o
r

a
f
t
e
r
b
(
0
.
0
0
0
4
)
(
0
.
0
0
0
5
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
1
)
(
0
.
0
0
0
7
)
(
0
.
0
0
0
4
)
Q
q
(
t
3

t
o

t
7
)
,
0
.
0
0
0
3
1
9
9
9

o
r

b
e
f
o
r
e
c
(
0
.
0
0
0
3
)
R
a
t
i
o

o
f

c
a
s
h

o
w

t
o
0
.
0
1
9
8
0
.
0
1
5
7
0
.
0
0
6
9
0
.
0
2
3
6
0
.
0
1
9
8
c
a
p
i
t
a
l

s
t
o
c
k
(
0
.
0
0
3
1
)
(
0
.
0
0
2
4
)
(
0
.
0
0
5
7
)
(
0
.
0
0
4
2
)
(
0
.
0
0
3
1
)
Y
e
a
r

d
u
m
m
i
e
s

i
n
c
l
u
d
e
d
Y
e
s
Y
e
s
Y
e
s
Y
e
s
Y
e
s
F
i
r
m

d
u
m
m
i
e
s

i
n
c
l
u
d
e
d
Y
e
s
N
o
Y
e
s
Y
e
s
Y
e
s
N
o
.

o
f

o
b
s
e
r
v
a
t
i
o
n
s
6
9
,
5
4
0
6
9
,
5
4
0
1
1
,
7
5
8
3
6
,
3
1
3
6
9
,
5
4
0
A
d
j
u
s
t
e
d

R
2
.
4
0
3
.
0
3
9
.
3
9
9
.
3
7
7
.
4
0
3
S
o
u
r
c
e
:
A
u
t
h
o
r
s

r
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

u
s
i
n
g

d
a
t
a

f
r
o
m

C
o
m
p
u
s
t
a
t
.
a
.
T
h
e

d
e
p
e
n
d
e
n
t

v
a
r
i
a
b
l
e

i
n

a
l
l

r
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

i
s

t
h
e

r
m
s

i
n
v
e
s
t
m
e
n
t

r
a
t
e

i
n

a

g
i
v
e
n

y
e
a
r
,

a
s

d
e
n
e
d

i
n

t
h
e

t
e
x
t
.

Q
i
s

t
a
x
-
a
d
j
u
s
t
e
d

q
,
d
e
n
e
d

a
s

[
q
/
(
1

)
]

[
(
1

)
/
(
1

)
]
,

w
h
e
r
e

i
s

t
h
e

s
t
a
n
d
a
r
d

m
e
a
-
s
u
r
e

o
f

t
h
e

t
a
x

t
r
e
a
t
m
e
n
t

o
f

i
n
v
e
s
t
m
e
n
t

a
n
d

i
s

t
h
e

c
o
r
p
o
r
a
t
e

t
a
x

r
a
t
e
.

N
u
m
b
e
r
s

i
n

p
a
r
e
n
t
h
e
s
e
s

a
r
e

s
t
a
n
d
a
r
d

e
r
r
o
r
s

c
l
u
s
t
e
r
e
d

a
t

t
h
e

r
m

l
e
v
e
l
.
b
.
Q
t
i
m
e
s

t
h
e

c
h
a
n
g
e

i
n

q
o
b
s
e
r
v
e
d

o
v
e
r

t
h
e

p
e
r
i
o
d

t
h
r
e
e

t
o

s
e
v
e
n

y
e
a
r
s

b
e
f
o
r
e

t
h
e

c
u
r
r
e
n
t

y
e
a
r
,

w
h
e
r
e

t
h
e

c
u
r
r
e
n
t

y
e
a
r

i
s

2
0
0
0
,

2
0
0
1
,

2
0
0
2
,

o
r

2
0
0
3
.
c
.
A
s

a
b
o
v
e
,

w
h
e
r
e

t
h
e

c
u
r
r
e
n
t

y
e
a
r

i
s

1
9
9
9

o
r

b
e
f
o
r
e
.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 301
from estimating this equation over all rms. It shows that there is no sig-
nicant difference in the investment-q relationship in the 2000s for rms
that had larger run-ups in their stock prices in the 1990s. Indeed, the point
estimate is actually positive, although small. Column 5-2 excludes the
rm dummies, so that we are explicitly comparing results across rms
rather than within a given rm. The result on the interaction term is very
similar to that in column 5-1: positive and not signicant.
Column 5-3 returns to the specication with rm dummies but restricts
the sample to rms in information businesses; these are the rms most
closely associated with the technology bubble. There is again no evidence
that large increases in equity values in the 1990s have reduced the sensi-
tivity of investment to the fundamentals in the 2000s. The point estimate
on the interaction term is insignicant, although this time slightly less
than zero. Column 5-4 repeats the analysis, this time for manufacturing
rms only, and again there is nothing notable. Finally, column 5-5 inves-
tigates whether the relationship changed any differently in the 2000s than
it did in earlier periods that followed asset price increases. The evidence
suggests that it did not.
Table 6 repeats the exercise reported in table 5 but uses the lagged per-
centage change in capital for the rm during the 1990s as the measure of
overhang. The advantage of the lagged change in q as the overhang mea-
sure in table 5 is that it picks up more directly the inuence of asset price
bubbles, which typically underlie the popular explanation of overhang.
The lagged percentage change in the capital stock as used in table 6, in
contrast, is a more direct measure of capital accumulation.
Table 6 reports estimates of the following equation:
(4) (I/K)
it

i
+
t
+
1
Q
it
+ Q
it
(%
t 7
t 3
K
2000+
it
) +
2
(cash/K)
it
+
it
,
where %
t 7
t 3
K
2000+
it
is the percentage change in the net capital stock of
the firm between time t 3 and time t 7 for 200003 (in other words,
the change in the capital stock during the mid-1990s).
Estimating this equation for the entire sample of rms, as reported in
column 6-1, does show a signicant negative coefcient on the interacted
Q term, indicating that rms that had larger accumulations of capital in
the 1990s did, indeed, show less sensitivity to the fundamentals in their
investment behavior in the 2000s. Although the direction is consistent
with the overhang view, the magnitude is extremely small. To see this,
consider that the highest mean value of lagged capital growth was 1.37 in
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 302
T
a
b
l
e

6
.
R
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

T
e
s
t
i
n
g

S
e
n
s
i
t
i
v
i
t
y

o
f

t
h
e

F
i
r
m
-
L
e
v
e
l

I
n
v
e
s
t
m
e
n
t
-
Q
R
e
l
a
t
i
o
n
s
h
i
p

t
o

P
a
s
t

C
h
a
n
g
e
s

i
n

I
n
v
e
s
t
m
e
n
t
a
I
n
f
o
r
m
a
t
i
o
n
A
l
l
A
l
l
b
u
s
i
n
e
s
s
e
s
M
a
n
u
f
a
c
t
u
r
i
n
g
A
l
l
i
n
d
u
s
t
r
i
e
s
i
n
d
u
s
t
r
i
e
s
o
n
l
y
o
n
l
y
i
n
d
u
s
t
r
i
e
s
I
n
d
e
p
e
n
d
e
n
t

v
a
r
i
a
b
l
e
6
-
1
6
-
2
6
-
3
6
-
4
6
-
5
q
0
.
0
1
2
4
0
.
0
2
1
4
0
.
0
1
5
5
0
.
0
1
1
7
0
.
0
1
3
7
(
0
.
0
0
1
4
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
2
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
1
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
7
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
5
)
Q
K
(
t
3

t
o

t
7
)
,
0
.
0
0
2
7
0
.
0
0
0
8
0
.
0
0
2
1
0
.
0
0
2
3
0
.
0
0
3
0
2
0
0
0

o
r

a
f
t
e
r
b
(
0
.
0
0
0
7
)
(
0
.
0
0
0
4
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
1
)
(
0
.
0
0
0
9
)
(
0
.
0
0
0
7
)
Q
K
(
t
3

t
o

t
7
)
,
0
.
0
0
1
3
1
9
9
9

o
r

b
e
f
o
r
e
c
(
0
.
0
0
0
4
)
R
a
t
i
o

o
f

c
a
s
h

o
w

t
o

0
.
0
1
6
8
0
.
0
1
1
4
0
.
0
0
5
8
0
.
0
1
4
3
0
.
0
1
6
8
c
a
p
i
t
a
l

s
t
o
c
k
(
0
.
0
0
2
4
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
7
)
(
0
.
0
0
4
5
)
(
0
.
0
0
3
3
)
(
0
.
0
0
2
4
)
Y
e
a
r

d
u
m
m
i
e
s

i
n
c
l
u
d
e
d
Y
e
s
Y
e
s
Y
e
s
Y
e
s
Y
e
s
F
i
r
m

d
u
m
m
i
e
s

i
n
c
l
u
d
e
d
Y
e
s
N
o
Y
e
s
Y
e
s
Y
e
s
N
o
.

o
f

o
b
s
e
r
v
a
t
i
o
n
s
8
3
,
1
4
7
8
3
,
1
4
7
1
4
,
7
3
5
4
4
,
3
2
6
8
3
,
1
4
7
A
d
j
u
s
t
e
d

R
2
.
3
7
1
.
0
3
5
.
3
5
7
.
3
3
7
.
3
7
1
S
o
u
r
c
e
:
A
u
t
h
o
r
s

r
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

u
s
i
n
g

d
a
t
a

f
r
o
m

C
o
m
p
u
s
t
a
t
.
a
.
T
h
e

d
e
p
e
n
d
e
n
t

v
a
r
i
a
b
l
e

i
n

a
l
l

r
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

i
s

t
h
e

r
m
s

i
n
v
e
s
t
m
e
n
t

r
a
t
e
,

a
s

d
e
n
e
d

i
n

t
h
e

t
e
x
t
,

i
n

a

g
i
v
e
n

y
e
a
r
.

Q
i
s

t
a
x
-
a
d
j
u
s
t
e
d

q
a
s

d
e
n
e
d

i
n

t
a
b
l
e

5
;

K
i
s

t
h
e

c
a
p
i
t
a
l

s
t
o
c
k
.

N
u
m
b
e
r
s

i
n

p
a
r
e
n
t
h
e
s
e
s
a
r
e

s
t
a
n
d
a
r
d

e
r
r
o
r
s

c
l
u
s
t
e
r
e
d

a
t

t
h
e

r
m

l
e
v
e
l
.
b
.
Q
t
i
m
e
s

t
h
e

c
h
a
n
g
e

i
n

t
h
e

c
a
p
i
t
a
l

s
t
o
c
k

o
b
s
e
r
v
e
d

o
v
e
r

t
h
e

p
e
r
i
o
d

t
h
r
e
e

t
o

s
e
v
e
n

y
e
a
r
s

b
e
f
o
r
e

t
h
e

c
u
r
r
e
n
t

y
e
a
r
,

w
h
e
r
e

t
h
e

c
u
r
r
e
n
t

y
e
a
r

i
s

2
0
0
0
,

2
0
0
1
,

2
0
0
2
,

o
r

2
0
0
3
.
c
.
A
s

a
b
o
v
e
,

w
h
e
r
e

t
h
e

c
u
r
r
e
n
t

y
e
a
r

i
s

1
9
9
9

o
r

b
e
f
o
r
e
.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 303
2002 (with a median value of past growth of 0.41). This value predicts
that the coefcient on Q would fall by only 0.0037 (and only 0.0011 for
the median). When we explicitly compare across rms by dropping the
rm dummies (column 6-2), the point estimate becomes positive. Column
6-3 restricts the sample to information businesses as before; the coef-
cient on lagged capital growth, although slightly negative, is similarly
modest. Column 6-4 repeats the analysis for manufacturing rms only
and again nds similar results. Column 6-5 demonstrates that, with this
measure of overhang, there is normally a small negative impact of lagged
capital growth on current investment rates, even in the period before the
2000s. The difference in the coefcient between the 2000s and the pre-
2000s period is only about 0.0017.
Taken together, the results in this section provide little evidence that
capital overhang has played a key role in investment behavior in the
2000s. Low investment during the bust is not correlated strongly with
excessive investment in the boom. Similarly, the sensitivity of invest-
ment in the 2000s to the fundamentals is not markedly different for
firms overall or for those firms usually at the heart of the overhang
view. In other words, the standard firm-level model using tax-adjusted q
has not become noticeably worse at explaining investment. Accord-
ingly, in the following section we use this model to analyze the impact
of taxes.
q Theory, Investment Incentives, and Dividend Taxes:
Theory and Empirics
As a prelude to using the tax-adjusted q model to study the impact of
the Bush tax cuts, it is useful to consider the aggregate movements in q
over the whole of the period that our rm sample covers, 19622003, in
thinking about the root determinants of the behavior of aggregate invest-
ment in the 1990s and 2000s. Figure 4 plots average q for the corporate
sector as a whole, measured as the total market value of all publicly traded
rms as computed by CRSP (Center for Research in Security Prices)
divided by the total stock of corporate capital as computed by the BEA in
its xed reproducible tangible wealth series. The series shows a historic
rise in q in the mid-1990s and an unprecedentedly steep fall in the
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 304
23. A plot using the average of rm qs in our sample (not shown) yields a similar
picture.
2000s.
23
Previous studies have found only very small coefcients on tax-
adjusted q, and so this rise and fall in q might not imply much in the way
of aggregate investment changes. We estimate the investment relation-
ship, however, within a slightly different framework than is typical, to
overcome possibly conating measurement issues. It should be clear that,
if the true coefcient on q for investment is not 0.02 but closer to 1, as
argued below, the investment collapse is eminently comprehensible
within the conventional framework. Clearly, within a standard q model of
investment, an equity price bubble can still drive investment up and then
down through movements in q. Such an account of the investment experi-
ence of the 1990s and 2000s is distinct from the intuition of a lingering
overhang from the 1990s.
Of course, as critics have frequently pointed out, the fundamental
question is why the coefcients on q in investment regressions are typi-
cally so low, implying extremely large adjustment costs. One of the key
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000
Ratio
a
Source: Authors calculations using BEA and Compustat data.
a. Ratio of the aggregate market value of all rms in the Compustat sample to the stock of corporate capital as computed by
the BEA in its Fixed Reproducible Tangible Wealth series.
Figure 4. Aggregate q, 19622002
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 305
potential problems discussed in the literature has been the importance of
measurement error in q. Marginal q is the variable of interest, but the data
can provide only average q. At least some of the existing literature has
argued that measurement error is at the root of the relatively weak empir-
ical performance of traditional investment models.
24
This issue of mea-
surement error is particularly important for thinking about the impact of
taxation, as we demonstrate below.
If, in fact, an empirical implementation of the q model provides more
reasonable coefcients through an alternative strategy of dealing with
these measurement issues, then these estimates can serve as the founda-
tion for analyses of the true marginal costs of adjustment and the impact
of the various tax policy changes enacted during the Bush administration
(the changes in depreciation allowances as well as the changes in divi-
dend and capital gains taxes). The rest of this section undertakes such an
analysis.
Tax-Adjusted q Theory, Dividend Taxes, and the Marginal Source
of Funds
To use the q model to analyze the impact of taxes, particularly divi-
dend taxes, we revisit the techniques for incorporating taxes into such
models developed by Summers and by James Poterba.
25
A crucial issue in
determining the impact of dividend taxes in this framework is what the
marginal source of funds for rms investments is. Briey, if the marginal
source of funds is retained earnings, then dividend taxes will have no
impact on marginal investment incentives. But if the marginal source of
funds is new equity, then dividend taxes will inuence investment. This
distinction is the subject of an enduring debate in public nance between
the new and the traditional view of dividend taxation.
Appendix B works through the implications of the two views in some
detail and provides alternative estimating equations. The investment
model typically estimated in the literature follows the traditional view. In
this view dividend taxes influence investment by, essentially, double-
taxing corporate income. Assuming quadratic adjustment costs, this view
generates the following investment-q relationship:
24. See, for example, Cummins, Hassett, and Hubbard (1994), Bond and Cummins
(2000), and Goolsbee (2001).
25. Summers (1981); Poterba and Summers (1983, 1985).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 306
where I is investment, K is the rms capital stock, is the adjustment
cost parameter, and represents an average investment rate. Under this
assumption, net new equity nances investment, so that investment is
determined by the point at which shareholders are indifferent between
holding a dollar inside or holding it outside the rm. In a world without
other taxes, the rm stops investing once q 1. Of course, if investment is
heavily subsidized (that is, if > ), rms may even continue investing
with q < 1, but the general idea is the same. Changes in dividend taxes
will inuence equity values and investment incentives by inuencing the
relative preference of investors to hold their money inside rather than out-
side the rm.
If, however, retained earnings are the marginal source of nance, the
traditional investment-q relationship of equation 5 will not hold. In this
case (again assuming quadratic adjustment costs), the relationship will
follow
where is the tax rate on dividends is and c is the accrual-equivalent tax
rate on capital gains.
Equation 6 corresponds to the new (or trapped equity or tax capi-
talization) view of the role of dividend taxation. In this view dividend
taxes do not inuence the tax term for marginal investments.
26
Instead
they are fully capitalized into existing share prices. In other words,
changes in dividend taxes serve solely as a penalty or windfall on existing
rm values. To see the intuition behind this, consider a rm that uses
retained earnings at the margin to nance investment, with dividends
determined as a residual. In this model dividends are the only means of
distributing earnings to shareholders. In this setting, given that retained
( ) , 6
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
I
K
q
c
t
t
t
_
,
_
,
1
]
1
1
1
_
,
( ) , 5
1
1
1
1
1
I
K
q
t
t
t
_
,
_
,

26. This view originates in the work of King (1977), Auerbach (1979), and Bradford
(1981).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 307
earnings are the marginal source of nancing, investment is determined
by the point at which shareholders are indifferent between receiving a
dollar today as a dividend, with value 1 , and having the dollar rein-
vested, yielding (1 c)q. Accordingly, the rm will stop investing at the
point q < 1 in a world of no other taxes, rather than at q 1 as in
the traditional case.
What is counterintuitive about the new view, as expressed in equation 6,
is that although it argues that dividend taxes do not inuence investment,
the dividend tax rate appears in the investment equation. In contrast,
equation 5, which exemplies the traditional view, does not include a div-
idend tax term but corresponds to the view that dividend taxes do inu-
ence investment. The intuition for this is simply that, when dividend taxes
get capitalized into share values, they inuence q. This effect needs to be
removed from the investment equation under the new view, because this
part of q has no impact on investment. Alternatively, under the traditional
view embodied in equation 5, a permanent dividend tax cut raises the
value of q above 1, and this encourages further investment, just as any
other increase in q does.
There is an old and contentious debate within public nance over
which of these views is the more accurate. Proponents of the traditional
view cite evidence on the effects of dividend tax rates on corporate divi-
dend payout policy.
27
Furthermore, dividends seem more stable than the
new view implies, and other means of distributing prots to shareholders,
such as share repurchases, have become increasingly important. Propo-
nents of the new view note that new equity issuances are still quite rare
for most companies and that rms pay dividends even though dividends
are tax disadvantaged. The arguments in this debate are considerably
more involved than we can describe here.
28
Fundamentally, however,
which view is more accurate is primarily an empirical matter. Surpris-
ingly, except for the work on aggregate investment in the United King-
1
1
c
27. See the work of Poterba and Summers (1985), Chetty and Saez (2004), and Poterba
(2004) and the papers they cite. Auerbach (2002) points out, however, that interpretation of
the empirical evidence on this point is complicated by the fact that temporary cuts in divi-
dend taxes should encourage dividend payouts, even under the new view.
28. Fuller assessments of both views can be found in Auerbach and Hassett (2003),
Carroll, Hassett, and Mackie (2003), and Poterba and Summers (1985).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 308
dom by Poterba and Summers,
29
there have been no direct attempts to test
between the two views using investment data.
Poterba and Summers use thirty years of annual data from the United
Kingdom to test between equations 5 and 6; their results support the tradi-
tional view. Although Alan Auerbach and Hassett have been critical of
these ndings for, among other things, failing to account for other macro-
economic and tax changes occurring at the same time,
30
these estimates
are still the only direct empirical tests of how dividend taxes affect invest-
ment. Oddly, no one has extended the methods of Poterba and Summers
to firm-level data, where it is possible to control for many aggregate
factors. Nor has anyone ever applied their method to the United States,
perhaps because, until the 2003 tax cut, U.S. dividend taxes did not
change in isolation from other changes, but rather varied only through
changes in personal income tax rates. Instead the empirical work testing
the new versus the traditional view has adopted the indirect method of
examining the relationship between dividend taxes and dividend pay-
ments (or the valuation of dividend payments by investors).
31
The recent large changes in dividend taxes, however, make such an
analysis possible. Indeed, testing between these two views (and making
the required detour into the public nance debate) is critical for evaluating
the impact of the Bush tax cuts on investment. If the marginal source of
funds turns out to be retained earnings, the dividend tax cut will have little
or no impact on marginal incentives to invest. Before explicitly testing
between the two views, however, we lay out the basic tax-adjusted q
model and illustrate why we believe measurement error is a primary reason
that such models have implied high adjustment costs and have performed
so poorly in the past.
Empirical Implementation of the Q Model
In computing q empirically, we use the historical and current Compu-
stat database, which provides data on a panel of rms from 1962 through
29. Poterba and Summers (1983, 1985).
30. Auerbach (2002); Auerbach and Hassett (2003).
31. See, for example, Bernheim and Wantz (1995), Poterba (2004), Chetty and Saez
(2004), and Poterba and Summers (1985), as well as the opposing evidence in Bolster and
Janjigian (1991), Blouin, Raedy, and Shackelford (2004), and Ikenberry and Julio (2004).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 309
2003.
32
For some rms we also match this sample to the earnings esti-
mates provided by I/B/E/S (Institutional Brokers Estimate System). Esti-
mates of the tax term at the asset level are derived from data provided
generously by Dale Jorgenson.
33
As described in more detail in appendix A,
we follow Cummins, Hassett, and Hubbard and Robert Chirinko, Steven
Fazzari, and Andrew Meyer in using the BEAs capital flows table for
1997 to calculate the share of investment in each industry for each asset
type.
34
With that weighting, we calculate the weighted-average tax term in
each year for each four-digit industry in the Compustat data. Average
marginal tax rates on dividend and capital gains income (on an accrual
basis) are taken from Poterba.
35
Further discussion of the variable con-
struction and the sources of data is provided in appendix A.
The measurement of q and, in turn, Q, hinges on constructing a measure
of the ratio of a rms market value to its book value. The corporate nance
literature and the public nance literature have diverged somewhat in their
measurement of this ratio, and we consider both alternatives in the results
that follow. The corporate nance literature, as exemplied in the 1997
paper by Steven Kaplan and Luigi Zingales,
36
employs data from Compu-
stat to derive a measure of q as ,
where BV stands for book value and MV for market value, and all values
are taken from public financial records.
37
In contrast, the public finance
literature has emphasized the derivation by Salinger and Summers,
38
which constructs q as , where debt and equity
values are taken from nancial reports, but the market value of assets is
imputed using perpetual inventory methods and valuations of inventory as
discussed in the data appendix to Cummins, Hassett, and Hubbard.
39
MV Equity MV Debt
MV Assets
+
BV Assets MV Equity BV Equity
BV Assets
+
( )
32. Because of reporting conventions, the 2003 sample is somewhat smaller than the
sample in earlier years.
33. The data are described in more detail in Jorgenson and Yun (2001). Importantly,
the Jorgenson calculations do not take any future expectations of tax changes into account.
They use only the statutory tax rules for the year in question.
34. Cummins, Hassett, and Hubbard (1994); Chirinko, Fazzari, and Meyer (1999).
35. Poterba (2004).
36. Kaplan and Zingales (1997).
37. This numerator is also sometimes adjusted for deferred taxes.
38. Salinger and Summers (1984); see also Cummins, Hassett, and Hubbard (1994).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 310
Implicitly, this formulation takes the market value of debt to be its book
value.
As with any rm-level analysis employing Compustat data to study
investment, rules for considering extreme observations must be employed.
Following studies such as that by Simon Gilchrist and Charles Himmel-
berg, we truncate our measures of q (and of investment and cash ow as a
share of the capital stock) at the 1st and the 99th percentile.
40
Investment
rates and cash ow rates are taken as the ratio of capital expenditure and
operating cash ow before depreciation, respectively, to the capital stock.
Table 7 reports the results of estimating q models in our rm sample,
under both of the two alternative denitions of q, as well as Q, that is,
q adjusted for taxes, . We postpone discussion of the relevance
of dividend taxes, and so our estimating equation is equation 5 above,
with and without consideration of taxes. Columns 7-1 and 7-4 of table 7
contrast the performance of the corporate finance and public finance
measures of q without consideration of tax factors. Both coefcients are
signicant and positive, but the coefcient on the corporate nance q is
much larger. Inspection of the public nance qs indicates that extreme
values make up a large fraction of the sample and may contribute to this
pattern. Comparison of columns 7-2 and 7-5 provides a similar result,
with significantly larger coefficients on the corporate financebased
measure of Q. Nonetheless, the coefcients reect the common difculty
in this literature, which is that these small coefcients translate into
extremely high adjustment cost parameters (the inverse of the measured
coefcient). Inclusion of both q and Q, in the specications reported in
columns 7-3 and 7-6, results in a similar pattern, but does indicate that tax-
adjusted q outperforms q in explaining investment. This nding parallels
the nding by Summers of the relevance of tax adjustments in improving
the estimation of the q model.
41
Given the relative performance of q and Q in the results reported in
table 7, it is useful to consider separately the terms that make up Q to
better understand the sources of the relatively small coefcients on Q. As
discussed above, , and so the specications in table 7 can
Q
q
t

1
1
1
q
t
1
1
1

_
,


40. Gilchrist and Himmelberg (1998).
41. Summers (1981).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 311
T
a
b
l
e

7
.
R
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

T
e
s
t
i
n
g

S
e
n
s
i
t
i
v
i
t
y

o
f

t
h
e

F
i
r
m
-
L
e
v
e
l

I
n
v
e
s
t
m
e
n
t
-
Q
R
e
l
a
t
i
o
n
s
h
i
p

t
o

q
a
n
d

T
a
x
-
A
d
j
u
s
t
e
d

q
U
s
i
n
g
A
l
t
e
r
n
a
t
i
v
e

D
e
n
i
t
i
o
n
s
a
R
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

u
s
i
n
g

c
o
r
p
o
r
a
t
e

n
a
n
c
e
R
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

u
s
i
n
g

p
u
b
l
i
c

n
a
n
c
e
d
e
n
i
t
i
o
n

o
f

q
d
e
n
i
t
i
o
n

o
f

q
I
n
d
e
p
e
n
d
e
n
t

v
a
r
i
a
b
l
e
7
-
1
7
-
2
7
-
3
7
-
4
7
-
5
7
-
6
q
0
.
0
3
7
9
0
.
1
1
1
1
0
.
0
0
0
7
0
.
0
0
3
0
(
0
.
0
0
1
9
)
(
0
.
0
1
7
4
)
(
0
.
0
0
0
2
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
8
)
Q
0
.
0
2
3
1
0
.
0
8
6
3
0
.
0
0
0
5
0
.
0
0
2
3
(
0
.
0
0
1
1
)
(
0
.
0
1
0
2
)
(
0
.
0
0
0
1
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
0
)
R
a
t
i
o

o
f

c
a
s
h

o
w

t
o
0
.
0
0
2
0
0
.
0
0
0
6
0
.
0
0
1
5
0
.
0
0
0
3
0
.
0
0
1
3
0
.
0
0
1
3
c
a
p
i
t
a
l

s
t
o
c
k
(
0
.
0
0
1
5
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
5
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
6
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
5
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
5
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
6
)
N
o
.

o
f

o
b
s
e
r
v
a
t
i
o
n
s
1
6
0
,
0
5
1
1
4
2
,
0
4
3
1
4
2
,
0
4
3
1
6
1
,
4
1
6
1
4
2
,
8
8
2
1
4
2
,
8
8
2
A
d
j
u
s
t
e
d

R
2
.
3
7
7
.
3
7
6
.
3
7
7
.
3
6
8
.
3
6
7
.
3
6
7
S
o
u
r
c
e
:
A
u
t
h
o
r
s

r
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

u
s
i
n
g

d
a
t
a

f
r
o
m

C
o
m
p
u
s
t
a
t
.
a
.
T
h
e

d
e
p
e
n
d
e
n
t

v
a
r
i
a
b
l
e

i
n

a
l
l

r
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

i
s

t
h
e

r
m
s

i
n
v
e
s
t
m
e
n
t

r
a
t
e
,

a
s

d
e
n
e
d

i
n

t
h
e

t
e
x
t
,

i
n

a

g
i
v
e
n

y
e
a
r
.

Q
i
s

t
a
x
-
a
d
j
u
s
t
e
d

q
a
s

d
e
n
e
d

i
n

t
a
b
l
e

5
.

A
l
l

r
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

i
n
c
l
u
d
e

y
e
a
r

a
n
d

r
m

d
u
m
m
i
e
s
.
N
u
m
b
e
r
s

i
n

p
a
r
e
n
t
h
e
s
e
s

a
r
e

s
t
a
n
d
a
r
d

e
r
r
o
r
s

c
l
u
s
t
e
r
e
d

a
t

t
h
e

r
m

l
e
v
e
l
.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 312
naturally be recast to consider the separate effects for these two terms.
Splitting Q in this manner has the advantage of allowing us to consider
the role of measurement error in biasing the estimates previously
obtained. More specically, Cummins, Hassett, and Hubbard argue that
mismeasurement of q means that using the estimated coefcients from
standard investment regressions can dramatically understate the impact of
investment taxes.
42
They emphasize large tax reforms as being times
when the tax part of Q is not mismeasured, and they use these periods as
the basis for comparing actual with projected investment. The specica-
tions provided in table 7 take a simpler approach but in the same spirit. If
measurement error in q is a problem, splitting Q into two parts has the
advantage that the coefcient (or, more accurately, its absolute value) on
the term should provide a better estimate of the true coefcient on q.
43
Table 8 presents the results from splitting Q into its component parts.
Specically, the specication in the rst column replaces Q with q scaled
by 1 minus the corporate tax rate and terms for the equipment tax term
and the structures tax term. It is difcult to measure a rms relative
investment in equipment and structures, and so we simply include both
tax terms as separate regressors. Given the traditional difculties in
understanding the dynamics of incentives for investment in structures,
44
and given that equipment accounts for approximately 80 percent of cor-
porate investment, we expect the equipment tax term to be much more
precisely estimated. Controls for internal cash ow are included as well.
The key result from this table is that, although the q term remains
small, the coefficient on the equipment tax term is considerably larger
than typically estimated when just using Q and is close to 1 in absolute
value.
45
The second column includes q without a tax adjustment and indi-
cates, as with the results in table 7, that a tax-adjusted q term performs
1
1

43. This assumes that the measurement errors are not correlated in the two series. We
tried the same regressions in the exercise below, but excluding the q term and including
only the tax terms, and found the coefcient on the tax term to be even slightly larger in
absolute value, and so we are not as concerned about this issue.
44. See Auerbach and Hassett (1992).
45. We also tried including lagged q and tax term terms, but this had no impact on the
results.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 313
T
a
b
l
e

8
.
R
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

T
e
s
t
i
n
g

S
e
n
s
i
t
i
v
i
t
y

o
f

t
h
e

F
i
r
m
-
L
e
v
e
l

I
n
v
e
s
t
m
e
n
t
-
Q
R
e
l
a
t
i
o
n
s
h
i
p

t
o

C
o
m
p
o
n
e
n
t
s

o
f

T
a
x
-
A
d
j
u
s
t
e
d

q
a
I
n
c
l
u
d
e

c
o
n
t
r
o
l
s
I
n
c
l
u
d
i
n
g
f
o
r

p
a
s
t
I
n
c
l
u
d
e
I
n
s
t
r
u
m
e
n
t
a
l
B
a
s
e
l
i
n
e
o
r
d
i
n
a
r
y

q

i
n
d
e
p
r
e
c
i
a
t
i
o
n
c
o
n
t
r
o
l
s

f
o
r
v
a
r
i
a
b
l
e
s
I
n
d
e
p
e
n
d
e
n
t

v
a
r
i
a
b
l
e
r
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
r
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
a
l
l
o
w
a
n
c
e
s
b
d
e
b
t

s
h
a
r
e
s
c
r
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
d
q
/
(
1

t
)
0
.
0
2
3
1
0
.
0
8
5
8
0
.
0
1
6
6
0
.
0
2
4
5
0
.
2
1
2
0
(
0
.
0
0
1
1
)
(
0
.
0
1
0
2
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
1
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
1
)
(
0
.
0
0
5
4
)
q
0
.
1
1
0
3
(
0
.
0
1
7
4
)
T
a
x

t
e
r
m
,

e
q
u
i
p
m
e
n
t
0
.
8
8
9
5
0
.
7
8
6
5
0
.
7
0
7
8
0
.
8
9
4
9
2
.
5
3
5
1
(
0
.
3
1
7
3
)
(
0
.
3
1
6
2
)
(
0
.
2
8
7
0
)
(
0
.
3
1
6
3
)
(
1
.
0
1
0
1
)
T
a
x

t
e
r
m
,

s
t
r
u
c
t
u
r
e
s
0
.
0
1
6
9
0
.
0
0
6
4
0
.
0
3
3
3
0
.
0
1
2
7
0
.
7
9
0
2
(
0
.
0
4
5
2
)
(
0
.
0
4
5
3
)
(
0
.
0
4
0
8
)
(
0
.
0
4
5
0
)
(
0
.
2
7
1
6
)
R
a
t
i
o

o
f

c
a
s
h

o
w

t
o

c
a
p
i
t
a
l

s
t
o
c
k
0
.
0
0
0
5
0
.
0
0
0
4
0
.
0
0
9
0
0
.
0
0
0
2
0
.
0
1
7
0
(
0
.
0
0
1
5
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
5
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
8
)
(
0
.
0
0
1
5
)
(
0
.
0
0
2
2
)
N
o
.

o
f

o
b
s
e
r
v
a
t
i
o
n
s
1
4
1
,
6
2
9
1
4
1
,
6
2
9
1
1
1
,
0
5
9
1
4
1
,
2
4
5
4
6
,
1
5
4
A
d
j
u
s
t
e
d

R
2
0
.
3
7
6
.
3
7
7
.
3
8
1
.
3
7
8
S
o
u
r
c
e
:
A
u
t
h
o
r
s

r
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

u
s
i
n
g

d
a
t
a

f
r
o
m

C
o
m
p
u
s
t
a
t
.
a
.
T
h
e

d
e
p
e
n
d
e
n
t

v
a
r
i
a
b
l
e

i
n

a
l
l

r
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

i
s

t
h
e

r
m
s

i
n
v
e
s
t
m
e
n
t

r
a
t
e
,

a
s

d
e
n
e
d

i
n

t
h
e

t
e
x
t
,

i
n

a

g
i
v
e
n

y
e
a
r
.

A
l
l

r
e
g
r
e
s
s
i
o
n
s

i
n
c
l
u
d
e

y
e
a
r

a
n
d

r
m

d
u
m
m
i
e
s
.

N
u
m
b
e
r
s

i
n

p
a
r
e
n
t
h
e
s
e
s

a
r
e

s
t
a
n
d
a
r
d
e
r
r
o
r
s

c
l
u
s
t
e
r
e
d

a
t

t
h
e

r
m

l
e
v
e
l
.
b
.
C
o
n
t
r
o
l
s

f
o
r

t
h
e

p
r
e
s
e
n
t

v
a
l
u
e

o
f

t
a
x

d
e
p
r
e
c
i
a
t
i
o
n

a
l
l
o
w
a
n
c
e
s

o
n

p
r
e
v
i
o
u
s
l
y

p
u
r
c
h
a
s
e
d

i
n
v
e
s
t
m
e
n
t
,

a
s

d
e
s
c
r
i
b
e
d

i
n

a
p
p
e
n
d
i
x

B
.
c
.
C
o
n
t
r
o
l
s

f
o
r

t
h
e

s
h
a
r
e

o
f

d
e
b
t

i
n

r
m

n
a
n
c
i
n
g
.
d
.
F
i
n
a
n
c
i
a
l

a
n
a
l
y
s
t
s

r
e
p
o
r
t
e
d

e
s
t
i
m
a
t
e
s

o
f

t
h
e

r
m
s

e
a
r
n
i
n
g
s

a
r
e

u
s
e
d

a
s

a
n

i
n
s
t
r
u
m
e
n
t

f
o
r

r
m

q
.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 314
better than ordinary q. In this specification the coefficient on the equip-
ment tax term remains significant and large. The third and fourth
columns report two alternative robustness checks for these results that
are modifications to the basic tax-adjusted q model. First, the theory does
imply that the present value of tax depreciation allowances on previously
purchased investment should be included in the value of the firm. This is
frequently left out of empirical work on Q, since it is difficult to com-
pute. In the third column we approximate the size of these tax shields as
described in appendix A, and we add the value of these shields to the
value of the firm in Q. This does not change the estimated results dra-
matically. We found this to be true for all of the major results in the
paper, and, since computing the allowances requires reducing the sample
by more than 30,000, we exclude them from the results that follow. Sim-
ilarly, the model presented above follows most of the literature in assum-
ing away any issues regarding debt financing. In the fourth column we
incorporate the share of the firms financing that comes from debt,
46
and
the results are again similar.
The large coefcients on the tax term terms are worth dwelling on.
First, the model predicts that these coefcients should be of the same
magnitude as those on tax-adjusted q, but of opposite sign. Here, instead,
the coefcients on the equipment tax term are considerably larger. With
measurement error in q, the coefcient on the tax term may provide a
more realistic estimate of the true coefcient. Such a coefcient is consid-
erably closer to 1 and, consequently, corresponds to more realistic esti-
mates of adjustment costs. Restricting attention to years with major tax
reforms yielded similar estimates.
47
To obtain some further evidence on the role of q mismeasurement as
the reason for the small coefcient on the q term, we also modify the
empirical strategy of Stephen Bond and Cummins,
48
within the frame-
work of table 8. Their intuition is that earnings estimates by equity ana-
lysts as provided in the I/B/E/S database are a part of q that is based only
on fundamentals.
49
Rather than use these estimates to create an alternative
46. Following Summers (1981).
47. These results are similar to ndings by Cummins, Hassett, and Hubbard (1994).
48. Bond and Cummins (2000).
49. Cummins, Hassett, and Oliner (forthcoming) also look at investment equations that
include analysts earnings estimates.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 315
q measure, however, we use them as instruments for q.
50
Employing the
earnings estimates comes at considerable cost, given the shorter time
frame covered by the I/B/E/S database (19832003) and the severely
restricted number of rms covered by I/B/E/S. Nonetheless, we report in
the fth column of table 8 the results of this estimation. Several points are
worth noting. First, as indicated by the tenfold increase in the coefcient
on tax-adjusted q, mismeasurement of q seems important. Second, the
coefcient on the equipment tax term rises considerably as well. Given
the considerably smaller panel for these instrumental variables results, we
rely on the coefcients on the equipment tax term term in the rst column
of table 8 as the best estimate of the true coefcient from a tax-adjusted
q model. This analysis suggests that the true adjustment costs for invest-
ment are of plausible size, and so we use the model to estimate the impact
of the Bush tax cuts. Finally, it is useful to consider whether the relevance
of the q model is different in manufacturing industries, since many previ-
ous studies have restricted their sample to manufacturing. We prefer not
to do this, since manufacturing accounts for only a small fraction of total
investment. Table 9 replicates the analysis from the rst column of table 8
and divides the sample. Although the reduced sample sizes reduce the
power of these tests, the coefcients on the relevant tax term terms are
quite similar in the two subsamples, suggesting that the model performs
similarly well in both settings.
The Impact of Tax Cuts in the 2000s
During the George W. Bush administration two major changes have
been made to the tax code to reduce taxes on capital. First, in 2003 the top
capital gains tax rate was reduced from 20 percent to 15 percent, and the
tax rate on most dividends was reduced from the ordinary personal
income tax rate (which then had a maximum of 38.6 percent) to the capi-
tal gains tax rate. The second change substantially accelerated deprecia-
tion. In 2002 depreciation allowances for virtually all types of equipment
investment were increased, as rms gained the right to immediately
expense 30 percent of their purchases. In 2003 depreciation allowances
50. To be precise, we use the earnings estimates divided by (1 ) as an instrument for
q/(1 ).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 316
were increased again, as the fraction that could be immediately expensed
increased to 50 percent. Each of these tax changes needs to be treated dif-
ferently under the Q model.
Dividend Taxes
Although implementation of the dividend tax reduction was somewhat
complex, essentially the maximum rate on dividends for individuals was
reduced from the top rate on ordinary income (38.6 percent) to the capital
gains tax rate (maximum of 15 percent). Advocates argued that this tax
cut would reduce the tax term and stimulate business investment.
51
The
Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the dividend tax cut would
reduce revenue by more than $100 billion from 2003 to 2008.
52
Given this
high cost, it is worth assessing the impact of the cut. If the new view is cor-
rect, changes in dividend taxes have little or no impact on the cost of capital.
Table 10 reports results of our testing between the two views. In the
rst column we consider the relevance of dividend taxes by contrasting
the predictions of equations 5 and 6 in one specication. The difference is
51. See Hederman (2004) and Larry Kudlow, A Capital Idea from Microsoft,
National Review Online, posted on July 23, 2004 (www.nationalreview.com/kudlow/
kudlow200407230854.asp).
52. Joint Committee on Taxation (2003a).
Table 9. Regressions Testing Sensitivity of the Firm-Level Investment-Q
Relationship to Components of Q in Manufacturing and Nonmanufacturing
Industries
a
All Manufacturing Nonmanufacturing
Independent variable industries industries only industries only
q/(1 t) 0.0231 0.0210 0.0169
(0.0011) (0.0015) (0.0011)
Tax term, equipment 0.8895 1.1545 0.7034
(0.3173) (0.6943) (0.2853)
Tax term, structures 0.0169 0.0035 0.0307
(0.0452) (0.1762) (0.0405)
Ratio of cash ow to 0.0005 0.0001 0.0090
capital stock (0.0015) (0.0022) (0.0018)
Adjusted R
2
.376 .336 .381
a. The dependent variable in all regressions is the rms investment rate, as dened in the text, in a given year. All regressions
are as specied in the rst column of table 8. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors clustered at the rm level.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 317
simply whether the q term is adjusted by the dividend tax preference
parameter or not. In the empirical specication of the rst column, we use
all years for which we have rm data. The measure of q that is interacted
with the term has a positive coefcient and is highly signicant.
The measure that is not interacted with the term is insignicant
and actually has a negative coefcient. The two coefcients are signi-
cantly different from one another as well. In other words, although the
marginal source of funds for these rms cannot be observed directly, their
investment behavior is consistent with their treating retained earnings as
the marginal source, and this implies that the new view is the correct one.
One major criticism of most previous analyses of the impact of divi-
dend tax rates on investment and other economic behavior has been that
changes in the rates themselves do not occur in isolation, but instead
accompany changes in the top marginal rate on ordinary income.
53
In the
later part of our sample, however (19972003), the tax changes that
1
1
_
,
c
1
1
_
,
c

53. See, for example, Auerbach (2002).
Table 10. Regressions Testing Sensitivity of the Firm-Level Investment-Q
Relationship to Capital Gains and Dividend Tax Rates
a
Sample period
Independent variable 19612003 19611996 19972003
q/(1 t) 0.0158 0.0067 0.0652
(0.0130) (0.0154) (0.0345)
(1 tcg)/(1 tdiv) q/(1 t)
b
0.0312 0.0241 0.0673
(0.0105) (0.0122) (0.0291)
Tax term, equipment 0.7795 0.6258 0.748
(0.3154) (0.3219) (2.6180)
Tax term, structures 0.0081 0.0237 9.464
(0.0454) (0.0459) (2.7730)
Ratio of cash ow to capital stock 0.0004 0.0134 0.0184
(0.0015) (0.0025) (0.0023)
Adjusted R
2
.376 .426 .486
a. The dependent variable in all regressions is the rms investment rate, as dened in the text, in a given year. All regressions
include year and rm dummies. Numbers in parentheses are standard errors clustered at the rm level.
b. tcg is the accrual-equivalent tax rate on capital gains and tdiv the tax rate on dividends.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 318
occurred are fairly specic in isolating the impact of dividend and capital
gains taxes. In 1997 capital gains rates fell without any change in the top
marginal income tax rate, and in 2003 both the capital gains rate and the
dividend tax rate did so. This period, then, should be particularly instruc-
tive. For this reason (and because rm nancing decisions may have
changed over time with the rise of new equity issuances), we break the
sample into the period before and the period including and after 1997.
Results for these two subsamples are reported in the second and third
columns of table 10. Both regressions show that the new view outper-
forms the traditional view, but the evidence is particularly strong for the
later period.
54
Again, the evidence in all cases supports the new view and
implies a small or negligible impact of dividend taxes on investment.
At the other extreme, in keeping with the discussion in Auerbach and
Hassett, among others,
55
who have argued that the new view may apply
for some rms and the traditional view for others, we calculate approxi-
mately how the dividend tax change would change the cost of capital if
our ndings were wrong and the traditional view held.
56
Under the traditional view, the required after-tax rate of return r* will
be r/[1 p (1 p)c], where r is the before-tax rate of return, p is the div-
idend payout rate, and c and correspond to the capital gains and divi-
dend tax rates, respectively. The full cost of capital, assuming no ination
in the price of investment goods and a permanent change in tax policy,
will then be COC (r* + ) .
With a real interest rate of 5 percent, annual depreciation of 15 per-
cent, a payout rate of 50 percent, and an accrual tax rate on capital gains
equal to one quarter the statutory rate (as is commonly assumed in the lit-
erature), reducing the dividend tax from 38.6 percent to the level of
the capital gains rate in 2003 for a fully taxable investor would be the
1
1
_
,
t
54. We also tried using only the personal tax rates from Poterba (2004) to take out any
potential bias that the trends in corporate and nontaxable investor shares of dividends
received might have on average marginal tax rates. This made no difference to our results
and consistently showed evidence in favor of the new view. Note that our results are not
identied by the level of the dividend tax term (which gets absorbed in the year dummies)
but instead by the interaction with q.
55. Auerbach and Hassett (2002).
56. Carroll, Hassett, and Mackie (2003) simulate the impact in more detail under vari-
ous assumptions.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 319
equivalent of dividing the cost of capital by 1.035. The equipment tax
term in 2003 was about 1.031, so this would have an effect on investment
of approximately the same magnitude as converting the tax code to com-
plete and immediate expensing of all equipment investment in 2003 (since
dividing the tax term by 1.035 would yield a value of approximately 1, the
same as immediate expensing). We will show in the next subsection,
however, that changes to the tax term of that magnitude may not increase
investment by much in the short run during this sample period.
The Impact of Partial Expensing
Although we nd no impact of the dividend tax cuts on investment, the
other tax incentives enacted during the early 2000s, specically the depre-
ciation allowance and partial expensing changes, directly reduced the tax
term under either view of the dividend tax and should have stimulated
investment. Their apparent failure to do so has led some to argue that tax
policy is not effective.
magnitude of the cuts. In 2002 President Bush signed a change in
the tax code to allow for partial expensing of equipment; this change was
made retroactive to cover all investment in 2002. In essence this rule
change broke an investment into two parts. Thirty percent of the invest-
ment is immediately expensed. The remaining 70 percent is depreciated
according to the normal schedule (which allows the rm to write off some
portion in the rst year, some portion in the second, and so on, for the tax
life of the asset). Given that a fairly large share of the investment not
being expensed already gets depreciated in the rst year, this new law
heavily weighted the depreciation allowances toward the rst year.
57
In
2003 the law was changed again (and again made retroactive to cover
investments made at any time during the year) to allow for rst-year
expensing of 50 percent of the investment. Although this provision was
scheduled to expire at the end of 2003, it was extended to 2004 and may
be extended further in the futureas of this writing, many legislators and
commentators are arguing that it should be made permanent.
57. Cohen, Hassett, and Hansen (2002) provide a comprehensive analysis of the 2002
change.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 320
These incentives were costly to provide, of course. The Joint Commit-
tee on Taxation estimated the cost of the changes in 2002 at about $35 bil-
lion and the cost of the higher expensing in 2003 and 2004 at about $32
billion and $53 billion, respectively.
58
Extending it indenitely would pre-
sumably entail similar annual costs.
To estimate the effect of the changed investment incentives, we com-
pute the increase in investment implied by the changes to depreciation
allowances. The last two columns of appendix table A-1 report the change
in the tax term from 2001 to 2003, averaged across industries at the three-
digit NAICS level. The rst column considers the overall change in the
tax cost, and the second the change in the tax term for equipment only.
Not surprisingly, the amounts differ across industries depending on the
nature of the investment goods they purchase. Airlines, for example,
invest mostly in equipment and mostly in long-lived assets such as air-
craft. Long-lived assets that qualify for bonus depreciation receive the
largest boost from allowing 50 percent immediate expensing (since they
were depreciated over a longer period before) and thus provide the largest
changes in the tax term. Firms in industries such as real estate and hotels
invest little in equipment, and what equipment they buy tends to consist
of computers and other short-lived assets for which immediate expensing
is not as large an improvement.
The table shows that even these rather dramatic changes to the depreci-
ation and expensing rules did not have a very large impact on the tax term.
The average change in the equipment tax term across all rms is about
0.03 (0.02 after incorporation of the equipment share). Such a change is
modest compared with changes such as the investment tax credit of 1962,
its restoration in the early 1970s, or the increases in the depreciation
allowance in 1981, all of which changed the overall tax term by around
0.10. Figure 5 depicts the industry-average equipment tax term over
roughly the last half century and shows that the most recent changes in
investment incentives have been modest by historical standards.
This relatively small effect stems from several factors. First, the value
of an acceleration in depreciation allowances is a function of the corporate
tax rate: with corporate tax rates already lower than they were in previous
decades, altering depreciation schedules has a more muted effect. Second,
the well-documented shift of investment toward computers and other
58. Joint Committee on Taxation (2002, 2003a, 2003b).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 321
equipment with shorter lives has meant that accelerated depreciation pro-
vides less relief. The average net present value of depreciation allowances
for equipment investment in 2001 was already approximately 90 percent
of the investment value even before the tax cuts, suggesting that even com-
plete expensing (raising the net present value to 1) would provide limited
additional benet. Given the smaller magnitude of the 2002 and 2003
cuts, it is unsurprising that such incentives could not overcome the dra-
matic drop in investment induced by the remarkable drop in q over the
period. Our estimates suggest that these incentives do work as they are
designed, but that their magnitude is simply too small to counteract the
aggregate trend.
how much did these incentives increase investment? To esti-
mate the precise impact of the tax changes on investment, we return to the
tax-adjusted q model. To use that model to simulate the impact of the tax
cuts in 2002 and 2003, we need to compute the transition path for invest-
ment in the standard q model.
59
Auerbach outlines a linearization that
59. See Abel (1981) and Summers (1981) for discussion.
0.95
1.00
1.05
1.10
1.15
1.20
1954 1958 1962 1966 1970 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002
Source: Authors calculations based on Jorgenson and Yun (2001).
a. Unweighted average of q/(1 T) (1 )/(1 T) for 300 three-digit NAICS industries.
L
Figure 5. Aggregate Tax Term for Equipment,
a
19502003
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 322
makes this particularly easy,
60
and we adopt his notation to derive the pre-
dicted effects. Assuming a Cobb-Douglas production function with a capi-
tal share of 1 a, a real before-tax interest rate of r, quadratic adjustment
costs of (the reciprocal of the true coefcient on Q in our regressions),
and an adjustment cost-modied depreciation rate for capital in the rm
of
(the specic formula for which is given below), Auerbach shows that,
for an unanticipated permanent change in tax policy, the capital stock fol-
lows a simple partial adjustment model with
K
t

1
(K* K
t
), where K* is
the desired capital stock. The rate of adjustment
1
follows the formula
To compute this adjustment rate empirically, we assume a real interest
rate of 5 percent. We compute a, the complement of the capital share, as
1 minus the gross output share of value added for each industry as
reported in the disaggregated National Income and Product Accounts data
for 1998. We take the true coefficient on Q to be 1, following the results
above. We compute
[1 ( )/2], using our value for and the industry-

average depreciation rate on equipment or total investment, as com-
puted from the weighted average by asset in the Jorgenson data using the
industry weights in the capital ow table. This gives an annual adjustment
rate for each rm. The average annual adjustment rate for all rms is
about 33 percent, and the average value for each three-digit industry is
given in appendix table A-1 (for structures and equipment as well as for
equipment only). We then use the Cobb-Douglas production function to
derive the optimal capital stock.
61
( )
. 7
4
2
1
2
+
+
( )
r r
a r
60. Auerbach (1989).
61. Following the traditional literature, we make these calculations assuming that the
elasticity of K* with respect to the cost of capital is equal to 1, for a Cobb-Douglas pro-
duction function for a given level of output. Such a gure is consistent with the empirical
ndings surveyed in Hassett and Hubbard (2002) but larger than the ndings discussed in
Chirinko (1993) or in Chirinko, Fazzari, and Meyer (1999). If labor were held xed rather
than output, our calculations would be scaled by 1/, where is the complement of the
industry capital share (averaging about .66 to .70 in our data). To compute the total effect
with varying output would require a full general equilibrium model for all sectors with
industry-specic demand information. More details on the assumptions behind such calcu-
lations can be found in Coen (1969) and Hall and Jorgenson (1969).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 323
To compute the effect of these policies over the past two years, we
assume that the depreciation changes were unanticipated and thought to
be permanent.
62
We first derive the optimal capital stock and amount of
adjustment in the first year (2002). We then calculate the new optimal
capital stock for 2003 (after the second tax cut) and the amount of
adjustment based on the new gap between K* and actual K (where
actual K is higher than it was in 2001 because of the investment under-
taken in 2002). Averaging for each three-digit industry and summing
over the two years, we estimate the impact of the tax cuts on the capital
stock for each industry (table 11). The average increase for the period is
only about 1.0 to 1.5 percent, and so it is immediately clear why these
tax cuts have seemed to have little success in stemming the investment
declines: their short-run stimulus effect is too small. This is not a refu-
tation of the view that taxes matter. The tax cuts were effective in
changing incentivesthey simply were not large enough to counteract
the double-digit declines in investment rates observed in the 2000s.
Changes to depreciation allowances simply do not have much impact
when the system is already so close to full expensing and when aggre-
gate declines in market value (and therefore in q) are so large. Since
firms are moving asymptotically to the optimal capital stock, the
effects of the policy change will be smaller in later years than in the
first two years. After 2004 the average total increase will still be less
than 2 percent.
Conclusion
This paper has addressed two major questions arising from the puz-
zling investment experience of the 2000s thus far: First, to what extent
was the equity bubble of the 1990s correlated with the decline in invest-
ment in the 2000s? And second, why didnt the major tax cuts of 200203
do more to restore investment to normal levels?
62. That the changes were unanticipated is probably fairly accurate. An assumption of
permanence seems reasonable, because although the changes were announced as tempo-
rary, from the moment they were passed many have been advocating that they be made per-
manent (and indeed the changes have already been extended to 2004). We assume
permanence here because it considerably simplies the computation of the investment path.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 324
Table 11. Estimates of Change in Capital Stock Attributable to Tax Cuts of 2002
and 2003, by Industry
Change in capital stock,
200203
a
(percent)
Using tax term Using tax term
NAICS for equipment for equipment
code Industry and structures only
481 Air Transp. 1.58 1.68
514 Information Servs. & Data Processing Servs. 1.47 1.79
492 Couriers & Messengers 1.44 1.52
561 Administrative & Support Servs. 1.43 1.63
213 Support Activities for Mining 1.42 1.61
487 Scenic & Sightseeing Transp. 1.42 1.63
488 Support Activities for Transp. 1.42 1.63
485 Transit & Ground Passenger Transp. 1.39 1.52
541 Professional, Scientic, & Technical Services 1.32 1.58
233 Building, Developing, & General Contracting 1.32 1.38
234 Heavy Construction 1.32 1.38
235 Special Trade Contractors 1.32 1.38
313 Textile Mills 1.31 1.58
314 Textile Product Mills 1.30 1.60
316 Leather & Allied Product Mfg. 1.30 1.54
323 Printing & Related Support Activities 1.30 1.57
322 Paper Mfg. 1.28 1.46
421 Wholesale Trade, Durable Goods 1.27 1.58
422 Wholesale Trade, Nondurable Goods 1.27 1.58
493 Warehousing & Storage 1.26 1.63
513 Broadcasting & Telecommunications 1.25 1.68
511 Publishing 1.25 1.55
114 Fishing, Hunting, & Trapping 1.25 1.68
621 Ambulatory Health Care Servs. 1.24 1.61
331 Primary Metal Mfg. 1.22 1.43
523 Securities, Commodity Contracts, & Other Fin. 1.20 1.59
334 Computer & Electronic Product Mfg. 1.19 1.58
321 Wood Product Mfg. 1.18 1.53
336 Transp. Equip. Mfg. 1.18 1.46
315 Apparel Mfg. 1.18 1.56
484 Truck Transp. 1.16 1.36
312 Beverage & Tobacco Product Mfg. 1.15 1.39
337 Furniture & Related Product Mfg. 1.14 1.50
332 Fabricated Metal Product Mfg. 1.12 1.35
524 Insurance Carriers & Related Activities 1.12 1.41
333 Machinery Mfg. 1.12 1.43
327 Nonmetallic Mineral Product Mfg. 1.11 1.35
339 Miscellaneous Mfg. 1.11 1.41
811 Repair & Maintenance 1.11 1.45
311 Food Mfg. 1.10 1.42
335 Electrical Equip., Appliance, & Component Mfg. 1.09 1.37
(continued)
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 325
326 Plastics & Rubber Products Mfg. 1.07 1.29
622 Hospitals 1.03 1.82
324 Petroleum & Coal Products Mfg. 1.02 1.18
212 Mining (except Oil & Gas) 0.97 1.37
812 Personal & Laundry Servs. 0.95 1.43
113 Forestry & Logging 0.94 1.20
512 Motion Picture & Sound Recording 0.93 1.66
722 Food Servs. & Drinking Places 0.88 1.48
532 Rental & Leasing Servs. 0.86 1.00
325 Chemical Mfg. 0.86 1.28
522 Credit Intermediation & Related Activities 0.80 1.28
624 Social Assistance 0.77 1.59
482 Rail Transp. 0.73 1.39
562 Waste Management & Remediation Servs. 0.71 1.44
486 Pipeline Transp. 0.66 1.75
813 Religious, Grantmaking, Civic, Prof. & Similar 0.65 1.60
533 Lessors of Nonn. Intangible Assets 0.63 1.10
111 Crop Production 0.61 0.70
444 Building Mtrl & Garden Equip. & Supplies 0.58 1.56
448 Clothing & Clothing Accessories Stores 0.58 1.56
443 Electronics & Appliance Stores 0.58 1.56
445 Food & Beverage Stores 0.58 1.56
442 Furniture & Home Furnishings Stores 0.58 1.56
447 Gasoline Stations 0.58 1.56
452 General Merchandise Stores 0.58 1.56
446 Health & Personal Care Stores 0.58 1.56
453 Miscellaneous Store Retailers 0.58 1.56
441 Motor Vehicle & Parts Dealers 0.58 1.56
454 Nonstore Retailers 0.58 1.56
451 Sporting Goods, Hobby, Book, & Music Stores 0.58 1.56
221 Utilities 0.56 1.36
623 Nursing & Residential Care Facilities 0.56 1.74
112 Animal Production 0.54 0.66
611 Educational Servs. 0.49 1.72
713 Amusement, Gambling, & Recreation 0.41 1.31
711 Performing Arts, Spectator Sports, & Related 0.38 1.54
211 Oil & Gas Extraction 0.26 1.48
525 Funds, Trusts, & Other Fin. Vehicles 0.18 1.46
721 Accommodation 0.18 1.46
531 Real Estate 0.03 0.72
Source: Authors calculations using data from Compustat as described in appendix A.
a. Change in capital stock associated with changes in the expensing provisions by industry as described in the text.
Table 11. Estimates of Change in Capital Stock Attributable to Tax Cuts of 2002
and 2003, by Industry (continued)
Change in capital stock,
200203
a
(percent)
Using tax term Using tax term
NAICS for equipment for equipment
code Industry and structures only
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 326
The data at the rm, asset, and industry level do not support the popu-
lar explanation of how capital overhang affected the investment market in
the 2000s. The general evidence shows that rapid growth of investment in
the 1990s had very little correlation with the investment declines in the
2000s. The evidence further indicates that the rm-level relationship
between investment and q has not changed noticeably in the recent period
for rms that saw large increases in their market value or that invested
heavily in the 1990s. Instead the rise and fall of equity prices, in the con-
text of a conventional tax-adjusted q model that better accounts for mea-
surement error in measuring marginal q, is the best explanation for the
investment experience of the recent past.
This conventional tax-adjusted q model then serves as the basis for our
analysis of the impact of the recent tax cuts and their seeming impotence.
Our results show that the dividend tax cut, despite its high revenue cost,
had minimal, if any, impact on marginal investment incentives. The
results strongly favor the new view of dividend taxation, in which such
taxes are capitalized into share prices and do not affect marginal incen-
tives. Similarly, the partial expensing provisions passed in 2002 and 2003
were not large enough to provide much counterweight to the declines in
aggregate investment. Our estimates suggest that tax policies contributed
to an increase in the capital stock of only 1 to 2 percent.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 327
AP P E NDI X A
Data Sources and Denitions
Firm-Level Financial Data
Annual data for all companies in the Compustat database, from 1950
on, are accessed through Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS).
Market Valuation of the Capital Stock
The Compustat series Property, Plant, and EquipmentTotal (Net)
is used as a measure of capital equipment; Capital Expenditures (State-
ment of Cash Flows) is used as a measure of capital expenditure. Each of
these measures is converted to constant dollars by dividing by the current
value of the producer price index (PPI) for capital goods, taken from the
website of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Three factors enter into the current valuation of the capital stock. The
rst is changes in the prices of capital goods held over from previous
years. Our conversion to constant dollars sidesteps this component. The
second is additions to capital through investment expenditure. The third is
depletion of capital on hand through depreciation.
The rms current real capital stock can be thought of as the sum of the
nondepreciated stocks of all previous years plus investment in the current
year. Following Cummins, Hassett, and Hubbard (1994), and assuming a
constant rate of depreciation , we calculate the current capital stock as
K
T
K
0
(1 )
T
+ I
1
(1 )
T 1
+ + I
T 1
(1 ) + I
T
.
For example, the rm starts in period 0 with capital stock K
0
, but only
the nondepreciated part of this stock, (1 )K
0
, remains to be carried over
to the next period. Some of this carried-over capital is used up in produc-
ing output in the second period, leaving (1 )
2
K
0
to be carried over to the
third period, and so forth. By period T, then, only (1 )
T
K
0
is carried
over from period 0. Similar reasoning explains the coefcients on the lev-
els of investment carried over to period T from all previous years. I
T
rep-
resents investment expenditure in period T.
Given the ending levels of the capital stock for all years, including the
nal year, and the nal years investment spending (all deated by the PPI
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 328
for capital goods), we can solve for the average rate of depreciation for
each rm. This average rate of depreciation is then applied sequentially,
from the rst observed year for each rm to the last, to derive an esti-
mated capital stock for each rm-year observation.
Conversion of Inventory from Book to Market Valuation
The Compustat series InventoriesTotal is used as a measure of
the current value of inventory holdings. As in Cummins, Hassett, and
Hubbard (1994), we convert inventory levels from their book value to
market value (on a last-in, first-out, or LIFO, basis) by adjusting the
lagged book value of carried-over inventories for year-to-year changes in
the prices of finished goods. How the adjustment mechanism is imple-
mented depends on whether final inventories increase or decrease from
one year to the next. If inventories increase, those goods carried over
from the previous year are revalued at current prices, as is the net addi-
tion to total inventories:
Inv
m
t
Inv
m
t 1
(P
t
/P
t 1
) + Inv
t
, if Inv
t
0.
Essentially, under LIFO valuation rules, the ending levels of invento-
ries include all goods that are carried over from the previous year plus
unsold current production. All inventories carried into the current year
remain at the end of the year and are revalued at current prices. The net
addition to inventories is already measured at current prices and so needs
no further adjustment.
On the other hand, if inventories decrease during the current year, it is
assumed that all current production has been sold as well as some part of
inventories carried over from the previous year. All goods remaining at
the end of the year are then valued at current prices:
Inv
m
t
(Inv
m
t 1
+ Inv
t
Inv
t 1
)(P
t
/P
t 1
)
(Inv
m
t 1
+ Inv
t
)(P
t
/P
t 1
), if Inv
t
< 0.
Operating Income
The Compustat series Operating Income before Depreciation and
Operating Income after Depreciation are used as measures of net
income. Each was converted from nominal to real terms by dividing by
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 329
the PPI for nished goods, taken from the website of the Bureau of Labor
Statistics.
Analysts Earnings Estimates
Consensus analysts estimates of rms earnings per share in future
years were taken from the I/B/E/S summary statistics data maintained on
WRDS. The variables in this le include the number of estimates and the
mean, median, and standard deviation of estimates for a number of scal
periods (quarters or years) into the future. We merged the Compustat
rm-level nancial data with the I/B/E/S rm-level analysts estimates.
We used the summary estimate made during the latest month before the
end of the rms scal year.
Asset-Level Tax Term
Data for the asset-level tax term come from Dale Jorgenson of Harvard
University; his methodology is described in Jorgenson and Yun (2001).
These data provide, for each asset type, an estimate of the net present
value of depreciation allowances z, the investment tax credit rate, and the
depreciation rate, as well as the capital stock and the average corporate
tax rate. We compute as ITC + tz and the full tax term as (1 ITC
tz)/(1 t). The calculations are myopic in that they do not include the
impact of expected future tax changes; current tax rates are assumed to be
permanent. We modify the net present values of depreciation allowances
in 2002 and 2003, to account for the changes in the partial expensing
rules. We recomputed z, for 2002, using a 70-30 weighted average of the
old z and 1; we do the same, but with 50-50 weights, for 2003.
Industry- and Firm-Level Tax Terms
To derive industry-level values of the tax term for equipment and
structures as well as to derive industry-level depreciation rates, we use the
1997 capital ow tables of the BEA and compute the share of equipment
and structures investment by asset type for each industry at approximately
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 330
the three-digit NAICS level. We match these weights to the Jorgenson tax
term gures by year for each asset type to compute a weighted-average
tax term in each year for each industry. We then merge that series to each
rm-year based on its rst listed NAICS code in Compustat (table A-1).
Present Value of Depreciation Allowances on Past Investment
To estimate the value of A, the net present value (NPV) of deprecia-
tion allowances on past investments, we sort firms according to the
weighted average of depreciation rates on the types of equipment in
which firms in their industry invest. Using the inverse of this average
depreciation rate as an estimate of the lifetime of the firms capital, we
assume that all firms in the industry have a discount rate of 10 percent
and use double-declining-balance depreciation until straight-line depre-
ciation exceeds it, and then switch to straight-line. We then multiply the
NPV of the remaining depreciation allowances on investment from a
given year in the assets life by the investment-to-capital ratio lagged
that many periods. For example, if the actual depreciation allowances for
a three-year-lived good costing $1 were one-third each year (pure
straight-line depreciation), then the NPV of the allowances in the year of
the investment would be , the NPV of the
allowances remaining one year later would be , and
the NPV of allowances after two years would be z
age2
(.333). We would
then compute the value of depreciation on previous investments
as . Note that the NPV of depreciation
allowances for current (time t) investment is not included in this measure
(although it is in z); hence the computation of A for an industry whose
asset life is three years has only two terms.
We compute the NPV assuming an asset life of three years for any rm
for which the inverse of its average depreciation rate is between 3 and 4,
four years for any rm for which the inverse is between 4 and 5, and so
on, but with a cap at nine years (a few rms had average equipment lives
of slightly over ten years).
A t z
I
K
z
I
K
age
t
age
t
_
,
+

_
,
1
]
1
1
1
2
2
z
age
+
_
,
1
333
333
1 1
.
.
.
z
age
+ +
_
,
0
2
333
333
1 1
333
1 1
.
.
.
.
.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 331
T
a
b
l
e

A
-
1
.
E
s
t
i
m
a
t
e
s

o
f

A
d
j
u
s
t
m
e
n
t
s

t
o

T
a
x

C
h
a
n
g
e
s

b
y

I
n
d
u
s
t
r
y
E
q
u
i
p
m
e
n
t
E
q
u
i
p
m
e
n
t
s
h
a
r
e

o
f

t
o
t
a
l
E
q
u
i
p
m
e
n
t
E
q
u
i
p
m
e
n
t
N
A
I
C
S
a
n
d
E
q
u
i
p
m
e
n
t
i
n
v
e
s
t
m
e
n
t
a
n
d
E
q
u
i
p
m
e
n
t
a
n
d
E
q
u
i
p
m
e
n
t
c
o
d
e
I
n
d
u
s
t
r
y
s
t
r
u
c
t
u
r
e
s
o
n
l
y
(
p
e
r
c
e
n
t
)
s
t
r
u
c
t
u
r
e
s
o
n
l
y
s
t
r
u
c
t
u
r
e
s
o
n
l
y
1
1
1
C
r
o
p

P
r
o
d
u
c
t
i
o
n
0
.
1
4
8
0
.
1
4
3
9
1
0
.
1
5
4
0
.
1
4
3
0
.
0
2
8
0
.
0
3
1
1
1
2
A
n
i
m
a
l

P
r
o
d
u
c
t
i
o
n
0
.
1
5
4
0
.
1
4
7
8
7
0
.
1
7
2
0
.
1
5
3
0
.
0
2
4
0
.
0
2
9
1
1
3
F
o
r
e
s
t
r
y

&

L
o
g
g
i
n
g
0
.
3
1
8
0
.
3
0
4
8
5
0
.
1
6
4
0
.
1
4
5
0
.
0
2
2
0
.
0
2
7
1
1
4
F
i
s
h
i
n
g
,

H
u
n
t
i
n
g
,

&

T
r
a
p
p
i
n
g
0
.
2
7
2
0
.
2
6
2
8
1
0
.
1
0
6
0
.
0
9
4
0
.
0
3
3
0
.
0
4
3
2
1
1
O
i
l

&

G
a
s

E
x
t
r
a
c
t
i
o
n
0
.
3
1
5
0
.
2
5
2
2
1
0
.
1
7
2
0
.
0
9
1
0
.
0
0
7
0
.
0
3
3
2
1
2
M
i
n
i
n
g

(
e
x
c
e
p
t

O
i
l

&

G
a
s
)
0
.
3
0
0
0
.
2
8
6
8
2
0
.
1
3
5
0
.
1
1
8
0
.
0
2
3
0
.
0
3
0
2
1
3
S
u
p
p
o
r
t

f
o
r

M
i
n
i
n
g
0
.
3
7
9
0
.
3
7
1
9
0
0
.
1
7
1
0
.
1
6
1
0
.
0
2
8
0
.
0
3
1
2
2
1
U
t
i
l
i
t
i
e
s
0
.
2
4
0
0
.
2
0
7
5
8
0
.
1
4
0
0
.
0
9
2
0
.
0
1
9
0
.
0
3
8
2
3
3
B
u
i
l
d
i
n
g
,

D
e
v
e
l
o
p
i
n
g
,

&

G
e
n
.

C
o
n
t
r
a
c
t
i
n
g
0
.
3
6
5
0
.
3
6
2
9
7
0
.
1
8
7
0
.
1
8
2
0
.
0
2
6
0
.
0
2
7
2
3
4
H
e
a
v
y

C
o
n
s
t
r
u
c
t
i
o
n
0
.
3
6
5
0
.
3
6
2
9
7
0
.
1
8
7
0
.
1
8
2
0
.
0
2
6
0
.
0
2
7
2
3
5
S
p
e
c
i
a
l

T
r
a
d
e

C
o
n
t
r
a
c
t
o
r
s
0
.
3
6
5
0
.
3
6
2
9
7
0
.
1
8
7
0
.
1
8
2
0
.
0
2
6
0
.
0
2
7
3
1
1
F
o
o
d

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
1
1
0
.
2
9
6
8
4
0
.
1
5
5
0
.
1
3
5
0
.
0
2
6
0
.
0
3
2
3
1
2
B
e
v
e
r
a
g
e

&

T
o
b
a
c
c
o

P
r
o
d
u
c
t

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
1
6
0
.
3
0
3
8
7
0
.
1
6
1
0
.
1
4
4
0
.
0
2
6
0
.
0
3
1
3
1
3
T
e
x
t
i
l
e

M
i
l
l
s
0
.
3
3
5
0
.
3
2
4
8
8
0
.
1
2
8
0
.
1
1
7
0
.
0
2
9
0
.
0
3
4
3
1
4
T
e
x
t
i
l
e

P
r
o
d
u
c
t

M
i
l
l
s
0
.
3
6
3
0
.
3
4
8
8
7
0
.
1
6
1
0
.
1
4
4
0
.
0
2
7
0
.
0
3
2
3
1
5
A
p
p
a
r
e
l

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
4
2
0
.
3
2
4
8
3
0
.
1
5
3
0
.
1
3
2
0
.
0
2
6
0
.
0
3
3
3
1
6
L
e
a
t
h
e
r

&

A
l
l
i
e
d

P
r
o
d
u
c
t

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
4
4
0
.
3
3
2
8
9
0
.
1
5
6
0
.
1
4
2
0
.
0
2
8
0
.
0
3
2
3
2
1
W
o
o
d

P
r
o
d
u
c
t

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
3
4
0
.
3
1
9
8
4
0
.
1
4
2
0
.
1
2
4
0
.
0
2
6
0
.
0
3
3
3
2
2
P
a
p
e
r

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
0
7
0
.
3
0
1
9
3
0
.
1
3
5
0
.
1
2
8
0
.
0
3
0
0
.
0
3
3
3
2
3
P
r
i
n
t
i
n
g

&

R
e
l
a
t
e
d

S
u
p
p
o
r
t
0
.
3
5
6
0
.
3
4
3
8
8
0
.
1
6
3
0
.
1
4
7
0
.
0
2
7
0
.
0
3
2
3
2
4
P
e
t
r
o
l
e
u
m

&

C
o
a
l

P
r
o
d
u
c
t
s

M
f
g
.
0
.
2
4
3
0
.
2
3
7
9
1
0
.
1
5
5
0
.
1
4
4
0
.
0
3
0
0
.
0
3
3
3
2
5
C
h
e
m
i
c
a
l

M
f
g
.
0
.
2
8
6
0
.
2
6
8
8
0
0
.
1
8
0
0
.
1
5
0
0
.
0
2
2
0
.
0
3
0
3
2
6
P
l
a
s
t
i
c
s

&

R
u
b
b
e
r

P
r
o
d
u
c
t
s

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
0
0
0
.
2
9
0
8
8
0
.
1
3
3
0
.
1
2
1
0
.
0
2
6
0
.
0
3
0
3
2
7
N
o
n
m
e
t
a
l
l
i
c

M
i
n
e
r
a
l

P
r
o
d
u
c
t

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
0
2
0
.
2
9
1
8
8
0
.
1
5
4
0
.
1
3
9
0
.
0
2
7
0
.
0
3
1
3
3
1
P
r
i
m
a
r
y

M
e
t
a
l

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
4
5
0
.
3
3
2
8
8
0
.
1
5
6
0
.
1
4
1
0
.
0
2
6
0
.
0
3
0
A
d
j
u
s
t
m
e
n
t

r
a
t
e
(
1
)
D
e
p
r
e
c
i
a
t
i
o
n

r
a
t
e

(
)
C
h
a
n
g
e

i
n

t
a
x

t
e
r
m
,
2
0
0
1
0
3
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 332
3
3
2
F
a
b
r
i
c
a
t
e
d

M
e
t
a
l

P
r
o
d
u
c
t

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
3
9
0
.
3
2
8
8
9
0
.
1
6
2
0
.
1
4
7
0
.
0
2
4
0
.
0
2
9
3
3
3
M
a
c
h
i
n
e
r
y

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
7
1
0
.
3
5
3
8
5
0
.
1
9
6
0
.
1
7
1
0
.
0
2
3
0
.
0
2
9
3
3
4
C
o
m
p
u
t
e
r

&

E
l
e
c
t
r
o
n
i
c

P
r
o
d
u
c
t

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
9
5
0
.
3
7
7
8
6
0
.
2
1
2
0
.
1
8
6
0
.
0
2
4
0
.
0
3
0
3
3
5
E
l
e
c
t
.

E
q
u
i
p
.
,

A
p
p
l
i
a
n
c
e
,

&

C
o
m
p
o
n
e
n
t

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
2
7
0
.
3
1
2
8
6
0
.
1
6
6
0
.
1
4
7
0
.
0
2
5
0
.
0
3
0
3
3
6
T
r
a
n
s
p
.

E
q
u
i
p
.

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
6
6
0
.
3
5
3
8
8
0
.
1
7
1
0
.
1
5
5
0
.
0
2
4
0
.
0
2
9
3
3
7
F
u
r
n
i
t
u
r
e

&

R
e
l
a
t
e
d

P
r
o
d
u
c
t

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
4
5
0
.
3
2
7
8
3
0
.
1
5
2
0
.
1
3
1
0
.
0
2
5
0
.
0
3
1
3
3
9
M
i
s
c
e
l
l
a
n
e
o
u
s

M
f
g
.
0
.
3
3
4
0
.
3
2
0
8
6
0
.
1
6
2
0
.
1
4
4
0
.
0
2
4
0
.
0
2
9
4
2
1
W
h
o
l
e
s
a
l
e

T
r
a
d
e
,

D
u
r
a
b
l
e

G
o
o
d
s
0
.
4
0
2
0
.
3
8
3
8
6
0
.
2
0
8
0
.
1
8
3
0
.
0
2
4
0
.
0
2
9
4
2
2
W
h
o
l
e
s
a
l
e

T
r
a
d
e
,

N
o
n
d
u
r
a
b
l
e

G
o
o
d
s
0
.
4
0
2
0
.
3
8
3
8
6
0
.
2
0
8
0
.
1
8
3
0
.
0
2
4
0
.
0
2
9
4
4
1
M
o
t
o
r

V
e
h
i
c
l
e

&

P
a
r
t
s

D
e
a
l
e
r
s
0
.
3
9
7
0
.
3
2
0
4
8
0
.
1
9
8
0
.
1
0
8
0
.
0
1
3
0
.
0
2
9
4
4
2
F
u
r
n
i
t
u
r
e

&

H
o
m
e

F
u
r
n
i
s
h
i
n
g
s

S
t
o
r
e
s
0
.
3
9
7
0
.
3
2
0
4
8
0
.
1
9
8
0
.
1
0
8
0
.
0
1
3
0
.
0
2
9
4
4
3
E
l
e
c
t
r
o
n
i
c
s

&

A
p
p
l
i
a
n
c
e

S
t
o
r
e
s
0
.
3
9
7
0
.
3
2
0
4
8
0
.
1
9
8
0
.
1
0
8
0
.
0
1
3
0
.
0
2
9
4
4
4
B
u
i
l
d
i
n
g

M
t
r
l
,

G
a
r
d
e
n

S
u
p
p
l
i
e
s

D
e
a
l
e
r
s
0
.
3
9
7
0
.
3
2
0
4
8
0
.
1
9
8
0
.
1
0
8
0
.
0
1
3
0
.
0
2
9
4
4
5
F
o
o
d

&

B
e
v
e
r
a
g
e

S
t
o
r
e
s
0
.
3
9
7
0
.
3
2
0
4
8
0
.
1
9
8
0
.
1
0
8
0
.
0
1
3
0
.
0
2
9
4
4
6
H
e
a
l
t
h

&

P
e
r
s
o
n
a
l

C
a
r
e

S
t
o
r
e
s
0
.
3
9
7
0
.
3
2
0
4
8
0
.
1
9
8
0
.
1
0
8
0
.
0
1
3
0
.
0
2
9
4
4
7
G
a
s
o
l
i
n
e

S
t
a
t
i
o
n
s
0
.
3
9
7
0
.
3
2
0
4
8
0
.
1
9
8
0
.
1
0
8
0
.
0
1
3
0
.
0
2
9
4
4
8
C
l
o
t
h
i
n
g

&

C
l
o
t
h
i
n
g

A
c
c
e
s
s
o
r
i
e
s

S
t
o
r
e
s
0
.
3
9
7
0
.
3
2
0
4
8
0
.
1
9
8
0
.
1
0
8
0
.
0
1
3
0
.
0
2
9
4
5
1
S
p
o
r
t
i
n
g

G
o
o
d
s
,

B
o
o
k
,

&

M
u
s
i
c

S
t
o
r
e
s
0
.
3
9
7
0
.
3
2
0
4
8
0
.
1
9
8
0
.
1
0
8
0
.
0
1
3
0
.
0
2
9
4
5
2
G
e
n
e
r
a
l

M
e
r
c
h
a
n
d
i
s
e

S
t
o
r
e
s
0
.
3
9
7
0
.
3
2
0
4
8
0
.
1
9
8
0
.
1
0
8
0
.
0
1
3
0
.
0
2
9
4
5
3
M
i
s
c
e
l
l
a
n
e
o
u
s

S
t
o
r
e

R
e
t
a
i
l
e
r
s
0
.
3
9
7
0
.
3
2
0
4
8
0
.
1
9
8
0
.
1
0
8
0
.
0
1
3
0
.
0
2
9
4
5
4
N
o
n
s
t
o
r
e

R
e
t
a
i
l
e
r
s
0
.
3
9
7
0
.
3
2
0
4
8
0
.
1
9
8
0
.
1
0
8
0
.
0
1
3
0
.
0
2
9
4
8
1
A
i
r

T
r
a
n
s
p
.
0
.
3
1
3
0
.
3
0
9
9
6
0
.
1
2
4
0
.
1
2
1
0
.
0
3
6
0
.
0
3
8
4
8
2
R
a
i
l

T
r
a
n
s
p
.
0
.
2
8
8
0
.
2
5
3
5
9
0
.
0
9
7
0
.
0
6
4
0
.
0
2
0
0
.
0
3
4
4
8
4
T
r
u
c
k

T
r
a
n
s
p
.
0
.
3
5
0
0
.
3
3
9
9
0
0
.
1
8
4
0
.
1
6
9
0
.
0
2
5
0
.
0
2
8
4
8
5
T
r
a
n
s
i
t

&

G
r
o
u
n
d

P
a
s
s
e
n
g
e
r

T
r
a
n
s
p
.
0
.
3
6
7
0
.
3
6
0
9
4
0
.
1
9
2
0
.
1
8
2
0
.
0
2
8
0
.
0
3
0
4
8
6
P
i
p
e
l
i
n
e

T
r
a
n
s
p
.
0
.
3
3
6
0
.
2
7
3
4
8
0
.
1
7
7
0
.
0
9
8
0
.
0
1
7
0
.
0
3
7
4
8
7
S
c
e
n
i
c

&

S
i
g
h
t
s
e
e
i
n
g

T
r
a
n
s
p
.
0
.
3
9
1
0
.
3
7
7
9
0
0
.
1
9
3
0
.
1
7
6
0
.
0
2
7
0
.
0
3
1
4
8
8
S
u
p
p
o
r
t

f
o
r

T
r
a
n
s
p
.
0
.
3
9
1
0
.
3
7
7
9
0
0
.
1
9
3
0
.
1
7
6
0
.
0
2
7
0
.
0
3
1
4
9
2
C
o
u
r
i
e
r
s

&

M
e
s
s
e
n
g
e
r
s
0
.
4
0
2
0
.
3
9
7
9
6
0
.
2
0
9
0
.
2
0
2
0
.
0
2
7
0
.
0
2
8
4
9
3
W
a
r
e
h
o
u
s
i
n
g

&

S
t
o
r
a
g
e
0
.
3
8
3
0
.
3
6
4
8
4
0
.
1
8
0
0
.
1
5
6
0
.
0
2
5
0
.
0
3
1
5
1
1
P
u
b
l
i
s
h
i
n
g

I
n
d
u
s
.
0
.
4
0
0
0
.
3
8
1
8
6
0
.
2
7
2
0
.
2
3
8
0
.
0
2
4
0
.
0
2
9
5
1
2
M
o
t
i
o
n

P
i
c
t
u
r
e

&

S
o
u
n
d

R
e
c
o
r
d
i
n
g
0
.
3
8
6
0
.
3
4
2
6
7
0
.
1
9
6
0
.
1
4
0
0
.
0
1
9
0
.
0
3
1
(
c
o
n
t
i
n
u
e
d
)
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 333
5
1
3
B
r
o
a
d
c
a
s
t
i
n
g

&

T
e
l
e
c
o
m
m
u
n
i
c
a
t
i
o
n
s
0
.
2
7
8
0
.
2
4
6
6
5
0
.
1
4
6
0
.
1
0
3
0
.
0
3
2
0
.
0
4
1
5
1
4
I
n
f
o

S
e
r
v
s
.

&

D
a
t
a

P
r
o
c
e
s
s
i
n
g

S
e
r
v
s
.
0
.
4
4
8
0
.
4
2
8
8
7
0
.
2
5
8
0
.
2
2
8
0
.
0
2
6
0
.
0
3
0
5
2
2
C
r
e
d
i
t

I
n
t
e
r
m
e
d
i
a
t
i
o
n

&

R
e
l
a
t
e
d
0
.
3
4
7
0
.
3
1
1
7
2
0
.
2
7
6
0
.
2
0
6
0
.
0
1
8
0
.
0
2
6
5
2
3
S
e
c
u
r
i
t
i
e
s
,

C
o
m
m
o
d
i
t
y

C
o
n
t
r
a
c
t
s
,

&

O
t
h
e
r
0
.
4
3
9
0
.
4
1
1
8
2
0
.
2
7
2
0
.
2
2
7
0
.
0
2
2
0
.
0
2
7
5
2
4
I
n
s
u
r
a
n
c
e

C
a
r
r
i
e
r
s

&

R
e
l
a
t
e
d
0
.
3
8
9
0
.
3
6
8
8
5
0
.
2
7
0
0
.
2
3
3
0
.
0
2
2
0
.
0
2
7
5
2
5
F
u
n
d
s
,

T
r
u
s
t
s
,

&

O
t
h
e
r

F
i
n
a
n
c
i
a
l

V
e
h
i
c
l
e
s
0
.
4
1
9
0
.
2
6
0
1
9
0
.
2
9
6
0
.
0
7
7
0
.
0
0
5
0
.
0
2
6
5
3
1
R
e
a
l

E
s
t
a
t
e
0
.
1
8
2
0
.
0
9
7
5
0
.
1
9
3
0
.
0
2
6
0
.
0
0
2
0
.
0
2
7
5
3
2
R
e
n
t
a
l

&

L
e
a
s
i
n
g

S
e
r
v
s
.
0
.
2
2
7
0
.
2
1
8
8
8
0
.
1
9
4
0
.
1
7
3
0
.
0
2
6
0
.
0
3
0
5
3
3
L
e
s
s
o
r
s

o
f

N
o
n
n
a
n
c
i
a
l

I
n
t
a
n
g
i
b
l
e

A
s
s
e
t
s
0
.
2
5
0
0
.
2
2
0
6
8
0
.
2
4
9
0
.
1
7
8
0
.
0
2
0
0
.
0
3
0
5
4
1
P
r
o
f
e
s
s
i
o
n
a
l
,

S
c
i
e
n
t
i
c
,

&

T
e
c
h
n
i
c
a
l

S
e
r
v
s
.
0
.
4
0
4
0
.
3
8
5
8
6
0
.
2
4
9
0
.
2
1
8
0
.
0
2
5
0
.
0
2
8
5
6
1
A
d
m
i
n
i
s
t
r
a
t
i
v
e

&

S
u
p
p
o
r
t

S
e
r
v
s
.
0
.
4
1
2
0
.
4
0
0
9
1
0
.
2
0
9
0
.
1
9
3
0
.
0
2
6
0
.
0
2
9
5
6
2
W
a
s
t
e

M
a
n
a
g
e
m
e
n
t

&

R
e
m
e
d
i
a
t
i
o
n

S
e
r
v
s
.
0
.
3
5
2
0
.
3
0
7
6
1
0
.
1
9
0
0
.
1
3
1
0
.
0
1
6
0
.
0
2
9
6
1
1
E
d
u
c
a
t
i
o
n
a
l

S
e
r
v
s
.
0
.
4
4
7
0
.
3
4
0
4
1
0
.
2
1
4
0
.
0
9
9
0
.
0
1
0
0
.
0
2
9
6
2
1
A
m
b
u
l
a
t
o
r
y

H
e
a
l
t
h

C
a
r
e

S
e
r
v
s
.
0
.
3
6
7
0
.
3
4
7
8
3
0
.
1
8
1
0
.
1
5
4
0
.
0
2
6
0
.
0
3
2
6
2
2
H
o
s
p
i
t
a
l
s
0
.
4
0
9
0
.
3
6
3
6
8
0
.
1
6
6
0
.
1
1
9
0
.
0
2
1
0
.
0
3
3
6
2
3
N
u
r
s
i
n
g

&

R
e
s
i
d
e
n
t
i
a
l

C
a
r
e

F
a
c
i
l
i
t
i
e
s
0
.
4
1
4
0
.
3
2
8
4
4
0
.
1
7
2
0
.
0
8
7
0
.
0
1
2
0
.
0
3
1
6
2
4
S
o
c
i
a
l

A
s
s
i
s
t
a
n
c
e
0
.
4
1
9
0
.
3
5
7
5
9
0
.
2
0
6
0
.
1
3
2
0
.
0
1
6
0
.
0
2
8
7
1
1
P
e
r
f
o
r
m
i
n
g

A
r
t
s
,

S
p
e
c
t
a
t
o
r

S
p
o
r
t
s
0
.
3
6
5
0
.
2
7
3
3
6
0
.
1
9
2
0
.
0
8
4
0
.
0
1
0
0
.
0
3
1
7
1
3
A
m
u
s
e
m
e
n
t
,

G
a
m
b
l
i
n
g
,

&

R
e
c
r
e
a
t
i
o
n
0
.
3
4
6
0
.
2
7
7
4
3
0
.
1
6
5
0
.
0
8
7
0
.
0
1
0
0
.
0
2
7
7
2
1
A
c
c
o
m
m
o
d
a
t
i
o
n
0
.
3
3
4
0
.
2
3
2
2
0
0
.
1
6
0
0
.
0
5
2
0
.
0
0
5
0
.
0
3
1
7
2
2
F
o
o
d

S
e
r
v
s
.

&

D
r
i
n
k
i
n
g

P
l
a
c
e
s
0
.
3
8
2
0
.
3
4
3
6
9
0
.
1
7
1
0
.
1
2
6
0
.
0
1
8
0
.
0
2
8
8
1
1
R
e
p
a
i
r

&

M
a
i
n
t
e
n
a
n
c
e
0
.
3
6
8
0
.
3
4
2
7
8
0
.
1
7
5
0
.
1
4
2
0
.
0
2
3
0
.
0
2
8
8
1
2
P
e
r
s
o
n
a
l

&

L
a
u
n
d
r
y

S
e
r
v
s
.
0
.
3
8
6
0
.
3
5
3
7
5
0
.
1
9
9
0
.
1
5
5
0
.
0
1
9
0
.
0
2
7
8
1
3
R
e
l
i
g
i
o
u
s
,

G
r
a
n
t
m
a
k
i
n
g
,

C
i
v
i
c
,

P
r
o
f
e
s
s
.
0
.
4
0
2
0
.
3
2
9
5
2
0
.
2
2
2
0
.
1
2
8
0
.
0
1
4
0
.
0
2
9
S
o
u
r
c
e
:
A
u
t
h
o
r
s

c
a
l
c
u
l
a
t
i
o
n
s

u
s
i
n
g

d
a
t
a

f
r
o
m

C
o
m
p
u
s
t
a
t
.
T
a
b
l
e

A
-
1
.
E
s
t
i
m
a
t
e
s

o
f

A
d
j
u
s
t
m
e
n
t
s

t
o

T
a
x

C
h
a
n
g
e
s

b
y

I
n
d
u
s
t
r
y

(
c
o
n
t
i
n
u
e
d
)
E
q
u
i
p
m
e
n
t
E
q
u
i
p
m
e
n
t
s
h
a
r
e

o
f

t
o
t
a
l
E
q
u
i
p
m
e
n
t
E
q
u
i
p
m
e
n
t
N
A
I
C
S
a
n
d
E
q
u
i
p
m
e
n
t
i
n
v
e
s
t
m
e
n
t
a
n
d
E
q
u
i
p
m
e
n
t
a
n
d
E
q
u
i
p
m
e
n
t
c
o
d
e
I
n
d
u
s
t
r
y
s
t
r
u
c
t
u
r
e
s
o
n
l
y
(
p
e
r
c
e
n
t
)
s
t
r
u
c
t
u
r
e
s
o
n
l
y
s
t
r
u
c
t
u
r
e
s
o
n
l
y
A
d
j
u
s
t
m
e
n
t

r
a
t
e
(
1
)
D
e
p
r
e
c
i
a
t
i
o
n

r
a
t
e

(
)
C
h
a
n
g
e

i
n

t
a
x

t
e
r
m
,
2
0
0
1
0
3
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 334
Note that our measure is an approximation because it assumes that tax
law remains unchanged over the whole sample period. In other words, the
NPV of depreciation allowances on current investment, z, that we get
from Jorgenson varies over time, but we do not have the entire deprecia-
tion schedules on which each z is based, and so we cannot let the calcula-
tion vary for A. We tried many different ways of computing A, for
example adopting different assumptions about depreciation methods, dif-
ferent discount rates, and so on, and found they had negligible impact on
the regression results.
AP P E NDI X B
Tax-Adjusted q with Dividend Taxes
WE BEGIN BY establishing the equilibrium condition that shareholders
receive their required return, r, from holding equity that provides taxable
dividends and capital gains, so that
(B1) rV
t
(1 )D
t
+ (1 c){E
t
[V
t + 1
] V
t
V
N
t
},
where is the tax rate on dividends and c is the accrual-equivalent tax rate
on capital gains. D
t
denotes dividends paid to shareholders in period t, V is
equity value, and V
N
t
denotes equity contributions made in period t. Given
that dividends and capital gains are alternative forms of returns to share-
holders, it is useful to summarize the relative tax penalty on dividends and
capital gains with the dividend tax preference parameter :
(B2) (1 )/(1 c).
Given that capital gains taxes are paid only when the gain is realized, is
considered to be less than 1.
63
Solving equation B1 forward, and imposing
the transversality condition that rm value cannot be innite in a nite
period, provides a value equation for the rm that implies
(B3) V E D V
t t t
N
t
0 0
0
( )
,
63. Even with similar rates on dividends and realized capital gains, < 1 is thought to
hold. Typically, the accrual-equivalent c is usually taken as one-quarter of the statutory rate
applicable to capital gains.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 335
where is the appropriate after-tax discount factor. Equation B3 cor-
responds to the straightforward intuition that rm value at time 0 is the
present-discounted, tax-adjusted value of all future dividends, taking into
account any equity contributions required to maintain a proportional
shareholding in the rm.
Firm value maximization is subject to several constraints. Dividends
and equity issuance are constrained to be nonnegative.
64
The rms capi-
tal stock K evolves according to
(B4) K
t
K
t 1
(1 ) + I
t
,
where is a constant proportional rate of decay and I is investment. The
underlying cash ow identity for the rm is given by
(B5) (1 )[F(K
t
, L
t
) w
t
L
t
C(I
t
, K
t1
)p
t
]
+ V
N
t
+ A
t
D
t
+ I
t
p
t
(1
t
),
where is the statutory corporate tax rate, F(K, L) is rm output, L is
labor, w is the wage rate, C(I
t
, K
t 1
) is an adjustment cost function for
investment, and A captures the tax value of depreciation allowances on
previous investments. Variable p is the price of capital goods relative to
output, and is a summary measure of tax provisions that directly inu-
ence investment, such as the tax value of depreciation allowances and
investment tax credits. The source and measurement of are described in
appendix A. In short, equation B5 states that a rms after-tax cash ow
and its new equity issuances are sources of funds, which are used for
investment and for paying dividends, and the ps ensure that all terms are
properly price adjusted.
65
Given the expression for rm value in equation B3 and the constraints
discussed above, rm value maximization employs the following Hamil-
tonian equation:
(B6) H
t
D
t
V
N
t

1
t
[K
t
K
t 1
(1 ) I
t
]
2
t
D
t

3
t
V
N
t
.
64. As Poterba and Summers (1985) note, repurchases can be allowed without loss of
generality. However, negative new equity issuances must be bounded by some maximum
amount, an assumption justied by the IRSs ability to characterize large, regularized
repurchases as dividends.
65. We abstract from debt and the presence of tax-deductible interest without loss of
generality.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:28 Page 336
In this setting,
1
t
,
2
t
, and
3
t
correspond to the shadow values of
capital goods, dividends, and negative equity issuances, respectively.
Substituting the value of dividends from the cash flow identity in equa-
tion B5, we can rewrite equation B6 as
(B7) H
t
(
2
t
){(1 )[F(K, L) wL C(I
t
, K
t 1
)p
t
]
+ V
N
t
+ I
t
p
t
(1 ) + A
t
} V
N
t

1
t
[K
t
K
t 1
(1 d) I
t
]
3
t
V
N
t .
Differentiating this Hamiltonian provides the relevant rst-order condi-
tions. The rst-order condition for investment is provided by
(B8) (
2
t
)(1 )C
I
p
t
p
t
(1 ) +
1
t
0,
and the conditions for dividends and net equity issuance are provided by
(B9) D
t
0;
2
t
0; and D
t
2
t
0
and
(B10) V
N
t
0; (
2
t
1
3
t
) 0; and V
N
t
(
2
t
1
3
t
)
0, respectively.
Rearranging the investment rst-order condition provided in equation
B8 provides an expression for q that corresponds to the shadow price for
capital:
(B11) (
1
t
/p
t
) q
t
(
2
t
)[(1 ) C
I
+ (1 )],
where C
I
is the marginal adjustment cost of new investment. In order to
put this in more familiar terms, we specify a conventional, quadratic
adjustment cost function:
(B12) C(I
t
, K
t 1
) (/2)[(I
t
/K
t 1
) ]
2
K
t 1
,
where is the adjustment cost parameter and represents an average
investment rate. This quadratic adjustment cost function allows us to rep-
resent equation B11 in more familiar terms. Differentiating the cost func-
tion with respect to I and substituting it into equation B11 yields
(B13)
I
K
q
t
t
t
t
_
,

( )
_
,
1
2
1 1
1
.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 337
Equation B13 is the basic estimating equation commonly used in
the q-theory literature, with the slight peculiarity that q
t
is divided
by (
2
t
). In the existing literature and our discussion below,
is also referred to as Q rather than q. It will be important
in our discussion of measurement error to note that Q is actually com-
posed of two parts, associated with investment opportunities and taxes.
In order to consider under what conditions the additional, peculiar term
disappears, it is critical to specify the marginal source of nancing. To do
so we return to the conditions B9 and B10 and consider the alternative
cases where the marginal source of nancing is either retained earnings or
new equity issuance.
First, consider the case where the marginal source of nance is new
equity issuances. In this case,
3
t
0 and, consequently,
2
t
1, as indi-
cated by equation B10. In this case equation B13 becomes its more famil-
iar variant:
Now consider the alternative case where the marginal source of nance
is retained earnings rather than new equity issuance. This implies that div-
idends are positive and that
2
t
0. In turn, this implies that equation B13
can be rewritten as
Equations B14 and B15 provide alternative q-theory specications for
investment that incorporate different assumptions about the marginal
source of nance and, consequently, about the role of dividend taxation in
inuencing investment.
( ) . B15
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
I
K
q
c
t
t
t
_
,
_
,
1
]
1
1
1
_
,
(B14)
I
K
q
t
t
t
_
,
_
,
1
1
1
1
1
.
q
t
( )
1
]
1
1
1

2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 338
Comments and
Discussion
Kevin A. Hassett: This paper by Mihir Desai and Austan Goolsbee
examines the impact of recent corporate tax changes on investment behav-
ior and investigates the impact of a possible capital overhang on invest-
ment. Since my fellow discussant will focus on the overhang issue, I will
concentrate my remarks on the tax and investment side of the paper.
To summarize my conclusions: The paper is a good, state-of-the-art
econometric effort that conrms many of the ndings of the recent invest-
ment literature. The regression results are competently arrived at and
believable. However, the authors policy discussion and their discussion of
the impact of recent tax reforms offer conclusions that do not follow from
their results. In relating their results to the impact of current policies, the
authors have favored some extreme assumptions that are not supported by
their empirical work, all aligned in a manner to make the tax cuts seem
ineffective. A more balanced assessment of the recent impact of the tax
reforms would certainly be more favorable.
A LOOK AT THE LITERATURE. The first of the recent corporate tax
changes reduced the user cost of capital by allowing rms to expense a
fraction of their capital purchases. This expensing has been temporary
from the outset, although there has been signicant uncertainty about
whether the expensing provisions would be allowed to expire. There is lit-
tle dispute that this tax change will lower the user cost of capital. In a
recent paper in the National Tax Journal, my coauthors and I found that
this reduction would vary by asset class, averaging about 2 to 3 percent,
if the change were viewed as permanent and if the expensing fraction
were the original, lower number.
1
If instead the provision were expected
339
1. Cohen, Hansen, and Hassett (2002).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 339
to expire, rms would have an incentive to shift investment forward. We
found that this effect would reduce the current user cost by much more.
The second change was to lower the tax rate on dividends and capital
gains. The effect of this change on the user cost depends on the marginal
source of nance. In another recent paper, my coauthor and I found that
approximately half of all rms behave as if they use new share issues as
their marginal source of nance,
2
and approximately half behave as if they
use retained earnings. Accordingly, relying on a third recent paper,
in which my coauthors and I modeled the impact of dividend tax law
changes,
3
I nd that the reduction attributable to the recent changes would
be quite large under the old view of dividend taxation and much smaller
under the new view. However, these conclusions depend crucially on
unobservables. The most important of these are the marginal tax rates on
dividends and on capital gains, which in turn depend on the nature of
nancial equilibrium. If, for example, a Miller equilibrium describes the
world, the relevant rates are those at which the marginal investor is just
indifferent between debt and equity, not the average observed rate. Across
a range of assumptions, however, the dividend change reduces the cost of
capital by about 7 percent on average, assuming that rms themselves are
split 50-50 between the old and the new views.
More recent evidence consistent with the idea that there exist both old
and new view rms includes work by James Poterba,
4
who has found that
dividend payout responds signicantly to tax changes, and by Raj Chetty
and Emmanuel Saez,
5
who found that dividend payouts increased sharply
after the recent change in the law. In a work in progress, Alan Auerbach
and I are exploring share price responses to the dividend change and nd-
ing results that conrm the conclusions in our earlier paper. There thus
appears to be a great deal of heterogeneity in the data, with some rms
behaving according to the old view and some according to the new view.
Whether these changes would result in a stimulus to investment depends
on the elasticity of investment with respect to the user cost. Glenn Hubbard
and I, in our chapter in the Handbook of Public Economics, concluded that
the literature is now leaning toward a relatively large elasticity.
2. Auerbach and Hassett (2002).
3. Carroll, Hassett, and Mackie (2003).
4. Poterba (2004).
5. Chetty and Saez (2004).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 340
A number of recent papers have strengthened support for the conclusion
that neoclassical fundamentals are important, by overturning past find-
ings that cash flow is a much more important determinant of investment
than the user cost or Q. For example, in a forthcoming paper, my coauthors
and I nd that cash ow does not matter in investment equations once one
controls for measurement error in Q.
6
Thus liquidity constraints should
not, the literature suggests, mute the possible effects of tax cuts.
THIS PAPER IN RELATION TO THE LITERATURE. This paper provides a
very clear view of where the empirical investment literature is at the
moment. The authors nd that, once one controls for measurement prob-
lems, fundamentals such as taxes are hugely important in investment equa-
tions. Indeed, in most of their specications, the estimated coefcient for
the tax term is close to or exceeds 1 in absolute value. Conrming the nd-
ings of Jason Cummins, Stephen Oliner, and myself,
7
they also nd that
cash ow does not inuence investment over and above the fundamentals.
The paper breaks from the literature in only one way. Using the same
data as much of the previous literature, the authors follow an empirical
strategy much like that of Poterba and Lawrence Summers in their semi-
nal paper on the old and new views.
8
They reverse the Poterba and Sum-
mers result and nd that the new view cost of capital explains investment.
This departs signicantly from the recent literature that has used dividend
rather than investment behavior to assess the relative importance of the
two views.
Their result favoring the new view is not very convincing, however.
For one thing, they favor the new view on the basis of parameter estimates
that are interacted with the Q variable, which the authors themselves con-
cede is mismeasured. The new view Q estimate is slightly less absurd than
the old view Q estimate, but both are an order of magnitude smaller than
the coefcients on the separate tax terms. If the coefcients were the same
as those on the tax terms, one might have more condence in the results.
In addition, there is serious doubt that Desai and Goolsbees approach
has any power to distinguish between the two views. What mainly distin-
guishes the two models is a marginal tax wedge variable that is unobserv-
able but approximated by an average taken from tax returns. That should
6. Cummins, Hassett, and Oliner (forthcoming).
7. Cummins, Hassett, and Oliner (forthcoming).
8. Poterba and Summers (1983).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 341
give one pause. Second, the tax wedge variable does not vary across rms.
This means that the authors have no within variation to identify the two
models, and they have very few real degrees of freedom. The correlation
between the two relevant variables must be enormouswithin a given
year it is unity. Add year effects, and it is something of a miracle that their
computer did not crash. It did not only because of the interaction with the
noisy Q variable. That the two variables enter with opposite-signed co-
efcients suggests that the design matrix may be ill conditioned, and this
raises red ags. This is exactly why other recent empirical attempts to
evaluate the relative importance of the two views have not attempted to
do so with investment data.
Moreover, the tax wedge variable mostly follows a steady upward
trend during this period (gure 1). Indeed, over the period observed in the
paper, in only two years (1982 and 2003) did the variable deviate more
than 5 percent, positively or negatively, from its value in the previous year.
The explanation of the results may simply be a spurious trend relationship.
Or maybe not. It is quite uncertain whether this average wedge is the
appropriate measure. It might be just as reasonable to use statutory tax
0.55
0.60
0.65
0.70
0.75
0.80
0.85
0.90
0.95
1931 1936 1941 1946 1951 1956 1961 1966 1971 1976 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001
Aggregate dividend tax preference parameter ()
a
Source: Poterba (2004).
a.
t
= w
h,t
*[(1-T
div,h,t
)/(1-T
cg,h,t
)], where w
h,t
is the share of corporate stock owned at time t by investor h, and T
div
and T
cg
are
the marginal tax rates on dividends and long-term capital gains, respectively. Calculations assume that the effective capital gains
tax rate is only one-quarter the statutory rate.
Figure 1. Investor Tax Preference for Dividends versus Capital Gains, 19292003
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 342
rates for dividends. Indeed, one of the more interesting aspects of the
recent tax changes is that the marginal dividend tax rate is no longer one
of any number of tax rates but instead is a known parameter. We do not
know what it is until the last observation. The accrual-equivalent capital
gains tax rate is also a guesstimate. Do the results change if other, equally
valid measures are used? The authors are too condent that they have the
correct measure of the crucial variable.
Thus, where the paper agrees with the literature, it is on rm ground.
Its disagreements with the literature may just be the result of poor design.
DID THE RECENT TAX CHANGES STIMULATE INVESTMENT? Given the
authors nding that tax variables affect investment, one might expect
that they would conclude that the recent tax changes had a major impact
on investment. They conclude otherwise for two reasons. First, they offer
a misguided view of the recent data. Second, they greatly understate the
user cost effects of the recent tax changes, and hence nd a small impact
on investment. I will respond to each of these in turn.
The authors argue that investment has not increased after these tax
changes, but the chart they present in making this case is rather mislead-
ing. Equipment investment surged after the dividend tax cut (gure 2).
We do not know yet whether this happened because of the cut, but surge
it did. The authors conclude that it did not respond to tax policy only by
cyclically adjusting the chart. But the current recovery may have been
slower than past recoveries for a number of reasons unrelated to invest-
ment policy. The key question is, Did investment policy stimulate
investment, ceteris paribus? The regressions that the authors run are not
cyclically adjusted, nor should the prima facie evidence be. The authors
appear to presume that a pro-investment policy can be judged successful
only if it immediately returns investment to a point beyond its previous
cyclically adjusted peak. I can think of no coherent rationale for such a view.
The authors understate the user cost reductions for two main reasons.
First, they accept their own estimates and assume that all rms adhere to
the new view. In doing so they neutralize most of the user cost effect of
the recent dividend and capital gains tax cuts. Second, they assume that
investors ignore the scheduled 2004 expiration of the partial expensing
provision and instead assume that it will remain in effect. Recall that, if the
provision does not expire, the user cost effects of the combined policies
sum to about 9 to 10 percent. Given the authors estimates, such a decline
is an impressive stimulus.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 343
For partial expensing, the expiration is a big deal. For example, for
seven-year-lived equipment, the percentage reduction in the Jorgensonian
user cost in an expiration year (with only 30 percent partial expensing) is
about 14 percent.
9
By assuming that the measure does not expire, the
authors load the case in favor of their conclusion that, despite the high
investment elasticity, the recent tax cuts had no effect. Using their coef-
cients and the more reasonable assumption that the expensing provision
is expected to expire, one could just as easily generate, from their own
model, a predicted 20 percent increase in equipment investment this year.
And investment has been increasing sharply, supporting, casually at least,
the view that policy has had the effect that the empirical evidence would
predict. Their conclusions about the efcacy of current tax policy are
likely the reverse of the truth.
9. Cohen, Hansen, and Hassett (2002, table 2).
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1995:1 1996:1 1997:1 1998:1 1999:1 2000:1 2001:1 2002:1 2003:1 2004:1
JCWAA,
March 2002
a
JGTRRA,
May 2003
b

Billions of chained 2000 dollars
Source: National Income and Product Accounts.
a. Job Creation and Worker Assistance Act, which established a 30 percent depreciation bonus.
b. Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act, which raised the depreciation bonus to 50 percent and cut dividend tax rates.
Figure 2. Gross Private Domestic Investment in Software and Equipment, 19942004
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 344
CONCLUSION. The empirical evidence that the paper presents with
regard to investment and the user cost supports the earlier literature in
numerous ways and will likely be cited often as a competent and up-to-
date estimation effort. The conclusions with regard to the new view versus
old view debate differ from those of the earlier literature, but questions
about the authors specication suggest that the optimal Bayesian weight
on these results is fairly low. In discussing policy, the authors assump-
tions lead to an understatement of the user cost effects. Contrary to their
claims, the evidence supports the view that the recent tax cuts likely had a
signicant impact on investment.
John V. Leahy: Mihir Desai and Austan Goolsbee have written a very
interesting and provocative paper on the recent downturn in investment
spending in the United States. In fact, they have written two papers. The
first deals with one commonly attributed cause of the downturn, namely,
capital overhang. The second investigates the success of one of the
intended solutions to this problem, namely, the Bush tax cuts. Sticking
to my comparative advantage, I will address my comments to the paper
on capital overhang.
Briey stated, Desai and Goolsbee make two claims. First, they claim
that there is little evidence of capital overhang in the cross section. To
back this claim, they show that high investment in the 1990s is not associ-
ated with low investment in the 2000s regardless of whether one sorts the
data by industry, by rm, or by type of capital. Second, they claim that
there is little need for the capital overhang story, because a fundamentals
story based on Tobins q performs adequately. Variables associated with
capital overhang provide no additional explanatory power in a standard
q-theoretic model of investment.
My main quibble with the paper is that Desai and Goolsbee never write
down an explicit model of capital overhang, without which the concept is
not clearly dened. We have no way of knowing how capital overhang
will manifest itself in their cross-sectional data, and we have no way of
knowing whether or not their tests are efcient. Is high past investment a
good measure of capital overhang at the rm level? Does the capital over-
hang story imply that high past investment is negatively correlated with
current investment? A few examples will illustrate how different theories
could lead one to different conclusions regarding these points.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 345
In their introduction Desai and Goolsbee dene capital overhang as the
view . . . that excess investment in the 1990s, fueled by an asset price
bubble, left corporations with excess capital stocks, and therefore no
demand for investment, during the 2000s. In this view an overhang is
something that is irrational and unjustied.
But there is another, more benign view of capital overhang: that there
was simply too much capital, not because of excessive investment or a
stock market bubble, but rather because of a change in rms view of the
protability of investment. Much happened between 1999 and 2001 that
could have induced such a change: disillusion with the information tech-
nology revolution, the decline in stock prices, corporate scandals, Y2K,
9/11. In this view rationally optimistic rms accumulated capital during
the 1990s, received new information around 2000, and found themselves
with more capital than they desired. There is nothing here that is hard to
reconcile with standard investment theory, and no reason that a standard
q-theoretic model would have any greater difculty dealing with this
episode than it would with other cycles.
There are several ways to build such a change in perspective into a
standard model of investment. One way would be to consider a neoclas-
sical model of the business cycle and endow firms with a capital stock
that is above the long-run equilibrium level because of past optimism
regarding the profitability of investment. Such a model would be broadly
consistent with the experience over the past five years. The real interest
rate, investment, and employment would all fall below their steady-state
levels, and consumption would rise above its steady-state level.
How would the Desai-Goolsbee tests look in this neoclassical model?
Since rms do not differ in their response to aggregate news, the cross
section would be uninformative. Moreover, since the model is completely
standard, marginal q would be sufcient to explain investment. Terms
associated with overhang would not provide any additional information.
This neoclassical model is a bit of a straw man, however. One would
not expect that a shock would hit all rms equally, or that the degree of
capital overhang would be the same across rms. One might therefore
expect to see some evidence of capital overhang in the cross section.
What form might this evidence take?
One way to model rm-level differences in the desire to invest would
be to introduce Ss dynamics in the spirit of Giuseppe Bertola, Ricardo
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 346
Caballero, and Eduardo Engel.
1
In such a model, idiosyncratic shocks
would lead to cross-sectional differences in firms desire to invest, and
frictions would prevent firms from adjusting immediately to their opti-
mal capital stock. There would then be a gap between the marginal pro-
ductivity of capital that triggers investment and that which triggers
disinvestment: To induce investment, capital would need to be productive
enough to cover both the cost of capital and the cost of adjustment. Simi-
larly, for disinvestment to occur, the gains achieved by disinvesting
would need to cover the adjustment costs. Capital overhang might be
interpreted as a situation in which adjustment costs lead a rm to hold
onto more capital than it would in the absence of these frictions.
What would be the correlation between past investment and current
investment in such a model? It depends on the form of the adjustment costs
and the common trend in the shocks. If xed costs dominate, investment will
tend to be lumpy. These lumpy investment episodes will tend to reduce the
marginal productivity of capital and make subsequent investment less desir-
able. In such cases one might indeed expect to see a negative correlation
between investment in the past and investment in the present. Russel
Cooper, John Haltiwanger, and Laura Power have shown, however, that it
may be very difcult to tease this correlation out of the data.
2
Unobserved
heterogeneity in the adjustment costs and differences in trend growth in pro-
ductivity both tend to bias the correlation in the opposite direction.
If instead the investment friction takes the form of irreversibility or a
wedge between the purchase and the sale price of capital, the situation is
entirely different. In this case past investment is a signal that a firm had
a high marginal productivity of capital in the past. If the idiosyncratic
shocks are uncorrelated with marginal productivity, such a rm is more
likely to have a high marginal productivity of capital today as well.
Absent other differences across rms, past investment would then be pos-
itively, not negatively, correlated with current investment.
How does capital overhang manifest itself in the irreversible invest-
ment model? Past investment in that case is not necessarily a good mea-
sure of capital overhang. Firms that invest are generally those with too
little capital. It is therefore the other rms that are more naturally suscep-
tible to overhang. A better measure might be an indicator of the irre-
1. Bertola and Caballero (1990); Caballero and Engel (1999).
2. Cooper, Haltiwanger, and Powell (1999).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 347
versibility of investment, although even here the correlation between over-
hang and investment might not accord with intuition. During a downturn,
the rms that face the greatest irreversibilities and therefore suffer from
the greatest threat of overhang may be precisely the rms that cut invest-
ment the least. The irreversibility prevents them from disinvesting. The
Desai-Goolsbee tests are not well targeted to this theory.
A common feature of most investment models is that investment is cor-
related with the marginal product of capital, or, more precisely, the present
value of the marginal product of capital. For the Desai-Goolsbee version
of the capital overhang story to hold, one needs a model in which the
high- and low-marginal-productivity rms switch places in or about 2000.
Firms that had high marginal productivity in the 1990s need to have low
marginal productivity in the 2000s. This switch would generate the nega-
tive correlation between past investment and present investment that their
data reject. Given that present values are dominated by expectations about
the future, this switch can only happen as a result of a shock that drasti-
cally alters rms views of the future.
The lumpy Ss model generates this switch through a leapfrogging
effect, in which rms with too little capital accumulate capital and surpass
rms that start out with greater capital stocks. The following model might
also t these requirements: In the 1990s rms differed in their expected
rate of productivity growth. Firms with high expected productivity growth
invested more heavily than others, hoping to cash in on the expected future
growth. For some reason, however, these expectations were not fullled,
and by 2000 those rms that had expected high productivity growth found
themselves with more capital than they desired, and they cut their invest-
ment spending by a greater amount than did other rms. Note that in this
model one does not need to take a stand on whether or not investment was
excessive. The mistaken expectations could be the result either of irra-
tional exuberance or of rational ignorance. One interpretation of the Desai-
Goolsbee regressions is that this last story does fully not explain the data,
although it may be part of the story if it is combined with some other story
that generates a positive correlation in investment rates.
I enjoyed reading this paper. The questions it raises are interesting and
important, and the authors answers are provocative. The evidence pre-
sented will prove an important contribution to our understanding of invest-
ment behavior. Whether or not overhang is a good term to describe recent
events remains an open question.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 348
General discussion: Several panelists raised questions about the authors
definition and measure of the capital overhang. Olivier Blanchard and
Daniel Sichel noted that the regressions using q as an explanatory variable
cannot distinguish between two important hypotheses: rst, that rms and
markets are perfectly rational, and investment moves in step with promis-
ing fundamentals (that is, rational forecasts of the expected present value
of marginal prots), and, second, that rms make investments on the basis
of stock market valuations that include a bubble component. In both cases,
ex post, the rms have accumulated too much capital and are now restrain-
ing investment: in the rst case because their rational forecast was in
error, and in the second because they responded to an irrational market.
Since the authors do not explore whether the surge in investment or the
rise in q in the late 1990s was justied by plausible forecasts of the funda-
mentals, they cannot analyze the reasons for the overinvestment.
William Nordhaus noted further that the authors equations show
only whether investment is surprisingly high or low relative to market
valuations. Insofar as investment in the 1990s, for example in ber optics,
turned out to have a lower rate of return than was expected, both the mar-
ket value and the need for investment will now be low. Since both the
decrease in q and the decrease in investment are due to the same outside
factor, the residuals from regressions of investment on q are not infor-
mative about whether earlier investment was excessive. Robert Gordon
remarked that the experience of the late 1990s and early 2000s should
remind us of the difculty of attributing causation to q. It seems likely that
both rms, in their investment decisions, and the market were overopti-
mistic about the protability of the new economy. Ben Bernanke reminded
the Panel that the empirical literature has found very small responses to
changes in q, which implies that firms would have smoothed their invest-
ment through the bubble. He wondered whether there were signicant
positive residuals to q in investment equations in the late 1990s. Benjamin
Friedman added that during the bubble period, for the rst time since
World War II, there was a signicant net inow of funds to the corporate
sector from equity issuance. Kevin Hassett noted further that this was a
period when there were many initial public share offerings, often by new,
small rms accessing the stock market for the rst time.
Nordhaus suggested that changes in the dispersion of investment across
firms might provide some clues about the importance of any capital
overhang from the 1990s. The firms the authors consider belong to very
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 349
different industries, ranging from shopping centers to aircraft engine
manufacturers. Many types of capital are nontransferable across sectors,
implying upper and lower bounds on investment; the upper bounds due
to capacity limits in the investment-producing sectors, and the lower
bounds given by zero gross investment. Given industry-specific shocks,
one would expect wide dispersion in investment rates across different
industries even in normal times. If overhang were specific to particular
industries in 2000, then one should observe greater dispersion of invest-
ment than usual. Nordhaus reported that the dispersion in the early
2000s does not appear to be significantly greater than during other cycles
of the postWorld War II period. Christopher House observed that, if over-
hang were rm specic, reecting dispersion of optimism across rms,
then even if that dispersion in the degree increased, there would be no
reason to expect aggregate investment to have been excessive in the late
1990s. The fact that it was supported John Leahys view that one should
look for an explanation at the aggregate rather than at the firm level.
Turning to the discussion of the effects of dividend taxes on investment,
House noted that the authors analysis of tax incentives assumes that the
recent tax cuts are permanent; the response would be quite different if agents
expected the cuts to expire as the law mandates. Standard neoclassical
analysis suggests that a temporary dividend tax cut should affect the tim-
ing of dividends, with little effect on investment. House also suggested
that the Congressional Budget Ofces projection of $130 billion in lost
revenue from the changes to partial expensing is an overestimate. Extend-
ing the CBOs projection beyond 2005 reveals that increased revenue later
on makes up for much of the short-run cost; the decline in the present dis-
counted value of revenue would be much smaller than reported.
Peter Orszag pointed out that changes in the user cost of capital due to
tax cuts depend on how the tax cut is nanced. He suggested that, with rea-
sonable values for the effects of decit-nanced tax cuts on interest rates,
the user cost of capital might actually rise. In the same spirit, William
Brainard remarked that, although the supply of saving may be elastic in
the short run when resources are underutilized, in the long run what hap-
pens depends on the elasticity of saving with respect to after-tax rates of
return. It is quite possible that increasing the after-tax rate of return actu-
ally decreases private saving, since dened-benet pension plans are tar-
get savers, and most dened-contribution plans are designed to achieve a
target replacement ratio. For such plans the income effect of rate changes
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 350
dominates the substitution effect. The same is true for life-cycle savers
whose intertemporal elasticity of consumption is less than 1, which is
what most studies suggest. He also observed that, in an open economy,
the marginal source of funds may be the saving of foreigners who are not
affected by the U.S. tax rate on dividends.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 351
References
Abel, Andrew B. 1981. A Dynamic Model of Investment and Capacity Utiliza-
tion. Quarterly Journal of Economics 96: 379403.
Abel, Andrew B., and Janice C. Eberly. 2002. Q for the Long Run. Working
paper. University of Pennsylvania and Northwestern University (July).
Auerbach, Alan. 1979. Wealth Maximization and the Cost of Capital. Quar-
terly Journal of Economics 93, no. 3: 43346.
______. 1989. Tax Reform and Adjustment Costs: The Impact on Investment
and Market Value. International Economic Review 30, no. 4, 93962.
______. 2002. Taxation and Corporate Financial Policy. In Handbook of Pub-
lic Economics, vol. 3, edited by Alan Auerbach and Martin Feldstein. Amster-
dam: North-Holland.
Auerbach, Alan J., and Kevin A. Hassett. 1992. Tax Policy and Business Fixed
Investment in the United States. Journal of Public Economics 47, no. 2:
14170.
______. 2002. Optimal Long-Run Fiscal Policy: Constraints, Preferences and
the Resolution of Uncertainty. Working Paper W9132. Cambridge, Mass.:
National Bureau of Economic Research (August).
______. 2003. On the Marginal Source of Investment Funds. Journal of Public
Economics 87, no. 1: 20532.
Bernanke, Ben. 2003. Will Business Investment Bounce Back? Remarks before
the Forecasters Club, New York, April 24.
Berner, Richard. 2001. Purging ExcessThe Capacity Overhang. Presented at
the Global Economic Forum, November 9, 2001 (www.morganstanley.com/
GEFdata/digests/20011109-fri.html#anchor1 [accessed August 2004]).
Bernheim, B. Douglas, and Adam Wantz. 1995. A Tax-Based Test of the Divi-
dend Signaling Hypothesis. American Economic Review 85, no. 3: 53251.
Bertola, Giuseppe, and Ricardo Caballero. 1990. Kinked Adjustment Costs and
Aggregate Demand. In NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1990, edited by
Olivier J. Blanchard and Stanley Fischer. MIT Press.
Blouin, Jennifer L., Jana S. Raedy, and Douglas A. Shackelford. 2004. Did
Dividends Increase Immediately after the 2003 Reduction in Tax Rates?
Working Paper 10301. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic
Research (February).
Bolster, Paul J., and Vahan Janjigian. 1991. Dividend Policy and Valuation
Effects of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. National Tax Journal 44, no. 4:
51118.
Bond, Stephen R., and Jason G. Cummins. 2000. The Stock Market and Invest-
ment in the New Economy: Some Tangible Facts and Intangible Fictions.
BPEA, no. 1: 61108.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 352
Bradford, David. 1981. The Incidence and Allocation Effects of a Tax on Cor-
porate Distributions. Journal of Public Economics 15, no. 1: 122.
Caballero, Ricardo J., and Eduardo M. R. A. Engel. 1999. Explaining Invest-
ment Dynamics in U.S. Manufacturing: A Generalized (S, s) Approach.
Econometrica 67, no. 4: 783826.
Carroll, Robert, Kevin A. Hassett, and James B. Mackie III. 2003. The Effect of Div-
idend Tax Relief on Investment Incentives. National Tax Journal 56: 62951.
Chetty, Raj, and Emmanuel Saez. 2004. Do Dividend Payments Respond to
Taxes? Preliminary Evidence from the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut. Working
Paper 10572. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research
(June).
Chirinko, Robert S. 1993. Business Fixed Investment Spending: Modeling
Strategies, Empirical Results, and Policy Implications. Journal of Economic
Literature 31, no. 4: 18751911.
Chirinko, Robert S., Steven M. Fazzari, and Andrew P. Meyer. 1999. How
Responsive Is Business Capital Formation to Its User Cost? An Exploration
with Micro Data. Journal of Public Economics 74, no. 1: 5380.
Coen, Robert M. 1969. Tax Policy and Investment Behavior. American Eco-
nomic Review 59, no. 3: 37079.
Cohen, Darryl S., Kevin A. Hassett, and Dorthe-Pernille Hansen. 2002. The
Effects of Temporary Partial Expensing on Investment Incentives in the
United States. National Tax Journal 55, no. 3, 45766.
Cooper, Russel, John Haltiwanger, and Laura Power. 1999. Machine Replace-
ment and the Business Cycle: Lumps and Bumps. American Economic Review
89, no. 4: 92146.
Cummins, Jason G., Kevin A. Hassett, and R. Glenn Hubbard. 1994. A Recon-
sideration of Investment Behavior Using Tax Reforms as Natural Experi-
ments. BPEA, no. 2: 159.
Cummins, Jason G., Kevin A. Hassett, and Stephen D. Oliner. Forthcoming.
Investment Behavior, Observable Expectations, and Internal Funds. Ameri-
can Economic Review.
Doms, Mark C. 2004. The Boom and Bust in Information Technology Invest-
ment. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Economic Review 2004,
pp. 1934.
Ferguson, Roger. 2001. Reections on the Capital Good Overhang. Remarks to
the Charlotte Economics Club, Charlotte, N.C., July 18.
French, Eric, Thomas Klier, and David Oppedahl. 2002. Is There Still an Invest-
ment Overhang, and If So, Should We Worry about It? Federal Reserve Bank
of Chicago, Chicago Fed Letter, Special Issue 177a (May).
Gilchrist, Simon, and Charles Himmelberg. 1998. Investment: Fundamentals
and Finance. In NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1998, edited by Ben S.
Bernanke and Julio J. Rotemberg. MIT Press.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 353
Goolsbee, Austan. 1998. Investment Tax Incentives, Prices, and the Supply of
Capital Goods. Quarterly Journal of Economics 113, no. 1: 12148.
______. 2001. The Importance of Measurement Error in the Cost of Capital.
National Tax Journal 53, no. 2: 21528.
______. 2004. Taxes and the Quality of Capital. Journal of Public Economics
88, no. 34: 51943.
Goolsbee, Austan, and David B. Gross. 2000. Estimating Adjustment Costs with
Data on Heterogeneous Capital Goods. Graduate School of Business, Univer-
sity of Chicago.
Greenspan, Alan. 2002. Economic Volatility. Remarks at the Federal Reserve
Bank of Kansas City Symposium, Jackson Hole, Wyo., August 30 (www.
federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2002/20020830/default.htm).
Hall, Robert E., and Dale W. Jorgenson. 1969. Tax Policy and Investment Behav-
ior: Reply and Further Results. American Economic Revies 59, no: 388401.
Hassett, Kevin A., and R. Glenn Hubbard. 2002. Tax Policy and Business
Investment. In Handbook of Public Economics, vol. 3, edited by Alan Auer-
bach and Martin Feldstein. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Hederman, Rea S., Jr. 2004. Tax Cuts Boost Business Investment. Heritage
Foundation Web Memo (www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/wm412.cfm
[accessed August 2004]).
Ikenberry, David L., and Brandon R. Julio. 2004. Reappearing Dividends. Uni-
versity of Illinois College of Business Working Paper (July).
Joint Committee on Taxation. 2002. Estimated Revenue Effects of the Job Cre-
ation and Worker Assistance Act of 2002. Document JCX-13-02. Washing-
ton: U.S. Government Printing Ofce (March 6).
______. 2003a. Estimated Budgetary Effects of the Conference Agreement
for H.R. 2 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003.
Document JCX-55-03. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Ofce (May 22).
______. 2003b. Estimates of Federal Tax Expenditures for Fiscal Years,
20042008. Document JCS-8-03. Washington: U.S. Government Printing
Office (December 22).
Jorgenson, Dale, and Kun-Young Yun. 2001. Investment, Vol. 3: Lifting the Bur-
den: Tax Reform, the Cost of Capital, and U.S. Economic Growth. MIT Press.
Kaplan, Steven N., and Luigi Zingales. 1997. Do Investment-Cash Flow Sensi-
tivities Provide Useful Measures of Financing Constraints? Quarterly Jour-
nal of Economics 112, no. 1: 169215.
King, Mervyn A. 1977. Public Policy and the Corporation. London: Chapman
and Hall.
Kliesen, Kevin L. 2003. Was Y2K behind the Business Investment Boom and
Bust? Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review 85, no. 1: 3142.
Kudlow, Larry. 2004. A Capital Idea from Microsoft. National Review On-
line (www.nationalreview.com/kudlow/kudlow200407230854.asp [accessed
December 2004]).
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 354
McCarthy, Jonathan. 2001. Equipment Expenditures since 1995: The Boom and
the Bust. Federal Reserve Bank of New York Current Issues in Economics
and Finance 7, no. 9: 16.
______. 2003. Capital Overhangs: Has Equipment Investment Spending Suf-
fered from a Hangover? Business Economics, October, pp. 2027.
______. 2004. What Investment Patterns across Equipment and Industries Tell
Us about the Recent Investment Boom and Bust. Federal Reserve Bank of
New York Current Issues in Economics and Finance 10, no. 6: 17.
Pelgrin, Florian, Sebastian Schich, and Alain de Serres. 2002. Increases in Busi-
ness Investment Rates in OECD Countries in the 1990s: How Much Can Be
Explained by Fundamentals? OECD Economics Department Working Paper
327. Paris: OECD (April 15).
Poterba, James. 2004. Taxation and Corporate Payout Policy. American Eco-
nomic Review 94, no. 2: 17175.
Poterba, James M., and Lawrence H. Summers. 1983. Dividend Taxes, Corpo-
rate Investment, and Q. Journal of Public Economics 22: 13567.
______. 1985. The Economic Effects of Dividend Taxation. In Recent Advances
in Corporate Finance, edited by Edward Altman and Marti Subrahmanyam.
Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin Publishers.
Ramey, Valerie A., and Matthew D. Shapiro. 2001. Displaced Capital: A
Study of Aerospace Plant Closings. Journal of Political Economy 109, no. 5:
95892.
Salinger, Michael A., and Lawrence H. Summers. 1984. Tax Reform and
Corporate Investment: A Microeconometric Simulation Study. Working
Paper 0757. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Saxton, Jim. 2003. Economic Repercussions of the Stock Market Bubble: A
Joint Economic Committee Study (www.house.gov/jec/growth/07-14-03.pdf
[accessed August 2004]).
Summers, Lawrence H. 1981. Taxation and Corporate Investment: A q-Theory
Approach. BPEA, no. 1: 67127.
Tevlin, Stacey, and Karl Whelan. 2003. Explaining the Investment Boom of the
1990s. Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 35, no. 1: 122.
2581-04_Desai.qxd 1/18/05 13:29 Page 355

Des Aigoo Ls Bee Final

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Des Aigoo Ls Bee Final

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Investment, Overhang, and Tax Policy

Mihir A. Desai and Austan D. Goolsbee 307

Mihir A. Desai and Austan D. Goolsbee 311

Mihir A. Desai and Austan D. Goolsbee 313

318 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2:2004

[1 ( )/2], using our value for and the industry-

338 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2:2004

You might also like